Under the Northern Star

Chile, Luz de America

2010-10-15T06:20:00.000-07:00

In 1809, the Chilean writer, José Camilo Henríquez, responding to South America's first shudders of independence in Quito, christened that city "Luz de America" (the light of America), correctly predicting the forces of self-determination unleashed in Quito would quickly be imitated in other colonies. Two hundred years later, however, it is Chile that is proving a beacon to the rest of Latin America.

This week, the world's eyes were firmly on Chile's stunning rescue of 33 trapped miners. This comes as a welcome break from the world attention usually lavished on Brazil for its economic "miracle" or the near universal opprobrium directed at Mexico or Venezuela. But here in Latin America, Chile has been top of mind for some time now thanks to a string of successes that have gone largely unheralded outside the region. The world did note Chile's construction codes prevented much of the country from being totally flattened by the powe

rful earthquake in February but attention quickly faded; the wonder, however, was not the existence of such building codes--many countries in the region have them on the books--but that the codes were actually followed.

It is this respect for laws and regulations, and the social cohesion evidenced in the way the country rallied behind the rescue of the miners, that fascinates Chile's neighbors. Again and again, I hear phrases like, "Why can't we be more like Chile?" or, "This type of thing doesn't happen in Chile." Here in Ecuador--where last month the country was nearly brought to its knees by striking police--the lamentations are particularly pointed. Comparisons between the two countries are rife these days, particularly in the way the governments responded to their respective crises. For example, in Chile: full media freedom to cover the mine crisis, warts and all; in Ecuador: complete black-out of independent media during the strike and an ongoing state-of-emergency a full two weeks afterwards.

This year--which incidentally is the bicentennial of Chile's independence--has been particularly revealing as the country has racked up one success after another. In January, all Latin America

marveled when Chile became the first country from the region to join the OECD (Organization for Economic Development and Co-operation), the grouping of the world's 31 wealthiest nations. This means Chile can no longer be referred to as a developing nation and grouped among "third-world" states. Chile's economic development has far outstripped its neighbors. As today's Washington Post notes, Chile has grown twice as fast as Brazil and reduced poverty to a much greater extent than even oil-rich Venezuela, with its wealth redistribution programs.

Another example of the country's success that hasn't gone unnoticed in neighboring countries is the relative strength of its financial sector. While much of the world reviles banks and bankers, laying the blame of the economic downturn at their feet, in Chile banks are respected. This is because the bankers have long worked collaboratively with government--Chile, for example, has a fully-privatized national pension program--and conservative lending policies and strong banking regulations meant banks in Chile largely escaped the financial crisis. Even the most liberal locals are grudgingly proud of the performance of their banks in the face of near-global financial collapse elsewhere.

Politically, too, Chile's successes make the rest of Latin America appear lacking. This year, Sebastian Piñera, a wealthy entrepreneur, coasted to victory in Chile's presidential elections (see Piñera below, with a miner). What was remarkable was that Piñera is a member of the right-wing party associated with the military dictatorship of the 70s and 80s while the majority of Chileans self-identify as liberals (more than 60%, according to one source). What is even more remarkable is his election comes only 20 years after the end of General Augusto Pinochet's brutal reign. Before Piñera's election, it was not uncommon to hear Chileans comment they would never vote to allow the right-wing party to return to power. And yet, this year they did just that because in Piñera they saw a technocrat who could continue to manage Chile's growth and bring needed reforms to government. They also saw in him a man whose pragmatism could further the country's internal cohesion and whose extensive international experience would further integrate Chile internationally; both qualities were on display as he led the response (much of it dependent on international firms) to the mine rescue.

Almost all of the countries in Latin America suffered under right-wing, military rule during the later years of the Cold War, but few suffered for as long, and with as much brutality, as Chile which saw Pinochet rule with an iron fist from 1973 until 1990.

The military coup that brought him to power was particularly bloody and left the presidential palace (right) a smoking ruin. Chileans will be the first to say that the scars are numerous and internal divisions within the country remain, but to the outside world they are practically invisible.

Chile isn't paradise, as any Chilean will be quick to point out. Poverty is still a problem and political and economic power is overwhelmingly concentrated in Santiago at the expense of the provinces. But, increasingly, Chile's neighbors are seeing in the country's success an example to follow as they deal with the same, seemingly intractable issues Chile has slowly, persistently begun to surmount.

Of the many vignettes from the miner rescue that has been given large play in the South American media was the reaction of the one non-Chilean to be rescued. Carlos Mamani, a Bolivian citizen, was met upon arriving at the surface by Bolivia's president, Evo Morales, a follower of the Venezuela-model of populist government and state-controlled economy (the opposite of the public-private partnership approach followed by Chile). The Bolivian leader offered to fly the miner home in the presidential jet and to give the man a house. But the miner had other ideas. "Thank you, Mr. President," he replied, "but I'm doing better here."

It's Bicentennial Time, Again

2010-08-02T10:22:00.000-07:00

Last summer, on my first visit to Ecuador, I considered myself lucky to be in the country at the

very moment it was celebrating its bicentennial. Quito was full of events and commemorative celebrations last year, and I attended as many as I could, eager to take advantage of the being here at the exact right time. My Ecuadorean friends, on the other hand, seemed rather unmoved by the ruckus. I chalked this up to a lack of patriotism.

August 2009

Fast forward to this month, August 2010, and I find I'm in the midst of a whole new series of bicentennial commemorations. On my desk right now is a guide to events entitled, "Vive el Bicentenario 2010." What's going on, wasn't 2009 the bicentennial year? Can there really be two bicentennials? Well, yes. And given Ecuador's long, labored birth, bicentennial celebrations are likely to last for many years to come, perhaps until 2030.

The tepid reaction of my friends to the events of 2009 was not so much a lack of patriotism as a defense mechanism: they were just settling in for the long haul.

How is it that the first country in Latin America to celebrate its bicentennial could, in reality, have been one of the last to achieve true independence, in 1830? The story is complicated. I'll do my best to be succinct.

The story of Latin American independence from Spain begins with the French, of course. One thing I've learned in my life is that if I dig deep enough into almost any inquiry, there is certain to be a French connection.

In 1808, Napolean invaded Spain, conquered and installed his hapless brother, Joseph, on the throne. In the colonies, this produced the odd situation in which the people, loyal to the deposed King, Ferdinand VII, suddenly found themselves being ruled by officials who were functionaries of a French King, Joseph Bonaparte (see dandy Joe, at right).

For a number of reasons, this was felt more acutely in Quito than elsewhere in South America. First of all, Quito was the intellectual center of the region, perhaps of all Spanish South America. An important and prolonged French scientific expedition (those French again) to the equator in 1736 exposed Quitenians to the ideals of the enlightenment. Meanwhile, Quito was home to three universities and was beginning to produce thinkers who were daring to question the colonial system.

Finally, Quito's political status as a political also-ran added pressure to stand on its own in an apparent new world order. Despite its cultural importance, Quito was always second as a center of power. First, it was under the administration of the Viceroy of Peru, in Lima and then under a new viceroyalty created in the north, Nueva Granada, headquartered in Bogota. Even during the Inca empire, Quito was the northern capital, playing second fiddle to Cuzco.

So, in August of 1809, a group of leading Quito creols, or "criollos" as the native-born whites were called, declared independence. Actually, independence might be too strong a word. What they established was a self-governing entity, loyal to Ferdinand, the true King of Spain, but autonomous from the viceroys in Bogota and Lima as well as the royal representative, count Ruiz de Castilla.

This revolt in Quito marked the first instance in Spanish America of locally born elites seizing power. This despite more than two centuries during which political power in the colonies was exercised exclusively by envoys from Spain. With revolutions in North America, France, and Haiti, it isn't surprising that this spark in Quito lit the fire of independence throughout the Spanish colonies and led to Quito being nicknamed by Latin American patriots, "Luz de America" (The Light of America).

Unfortunately for Quito--but central to understanding her many bicentennials--this spark was extinguished here rather quickly. By December 1809, troops from Bogota and Lima had descended on Quito and imposed martial law. Some forty of the town's leading citizens were thrown into the dungeon beneath the main military barracks in the center of town. Count Ruiz de Castilla, nominally back in power, promised there would be no reprisals. Yet the real power was in the hands of the military and their undisciplined soldiery who not only kept the rebel leaders in jail but became increasingly rowdy with the townspeople, as soldiers tend to do under conditions of extended martial law.

By the summer of 2010, the citizens of Quito had had enough and determined to liberate the rebel leaders from the dungeons. At 1:30 on August 2, 1810, two hundred years ago almost to the minute from when I writing these words, the bells of the main churches in Quito began to peal to signal the revolt. The timing was designed to coincide with the soldiers's midday meal. But the soldiers, perhaps tipped off to the plan, were ready. Not only did they crush the effort to storm the dungeons, they took the opportunity to massacre all the prisoners, forty feeble men exhausted after six months of subterranean confinement. Only two escaped, making their way through the sewers of the dungeon to a nearby river.

Once the soldiers had completed their grisly task in the dungeons they turned on the townspeople in a spree of random reprisal killings that left more than 300 dead in the streets and patios of the city. More than 1% of the population were shot and bayonetted to death before the violence ended around 3pm.

Quito's declaration of "independence" in August 1809, while endorsed by some freedom-minded revolutionaries in other colonies, had been met with only weak support from most of the empire; in fact, only a few minor neighboring cities joined Quito in declaring autonomy. However, the bloodletting the following year solidified opposition not only to the French King, but against Spanish rule of any sort. The Quito massacre caused Simon Bolivar (at right), who had not yet taken up arms against Spain to declare himself to "a war to the death against Spain."

After the events of August 2, 1810, things in Quito settled into an exhausted calm. First, a form of limited self-government was established but by 1812 this had devolved into full reassertion of royal control and the independence movement seemed dead. Elsewhere, however, the revolution was picking up steam.

By 1820 armies led by Bolivar in the north and Jose Marti in the south were advancing towards Quito and Lima, constricting the Royalist forces of Spain who, although now liberated of their French King, were still fighting tooth and nail to maintain their empire. On the 24th of May, 1822, rebel forces led by Bolivar and his deputy, Antonio Jose de Sucre (left), defeated Spanish forces in the Battle of Pichincha, within view of the city of Quito.

Spanish control of Quito and lands that would become Ecuador was over, but the country was not yet independent. Bolivar's dream of a united continent was not be, even he could see that regional rivalries on the continent were too big to overcome as, one by one, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, and Peru established independent entities.

But Bolivar still hoped to keep intact the lands that had once been the Viceroyalty of New Granada, basically comprising today's states of Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador. Bolivar called the country, Gran Colombia and the great liberator set himself up as its "President for life." Alas, this dream was not to be either. Despite Bolivar's charisma, jealousies prevailed and Gran Colombia slowly began to split apart. Just before his death in December 1830, Bolivar renounced control of his splintering nation. He had lived just long enough to see his dream fall to pieces as Venezuela and then Ecuador, in September, 1380, declared themselves independent states. (Panama would finally be prised away from Colombia in 1903 by Teddy Roosevelt who wanted a to build a canal.)

From 1809 until 1830, Ecuador was fighting, in one way or another, for independence. A group of rebellious, locally-born elites in Quito gave first expression to the desire for self-government in Latin America, but as the seeds of independence sown in Quito slowly bore fruit elsewhere, the city would see its leaders massacred and its lands forcibly reverted to royal control for more than ten years. Later, once the mantle of Spain had been thrown off, Quito and the surrounding country continued to live under dictatorial domination, this time from Bogota in the person of the great Liberator himself, Simon Bolivar.

It's a long, sad story. Today, August 2, 2010, Quito commemorates the bicentennial of the massacre of its revolutionary leaders and hundreds of its citizens, but the bicentennial celebrations of the country's independence will continue for years to come.

The (first) Declaration of Independence, August 10, 1809

¡Achachay! 2

2010-07-20T21:30:00.000-07:00

The cold snap I was complaining about in my last posting has apparently been felt even more severely in other countries in the region. Ecuador, it seems, has escaped rather lightly.

In Argentina, snow has fallen in many parts of the country that seldom, if ever, experience it, and the president declared several regions national disaster areas. The cold there has been blamed for more than 40 deaths so far. The hardest hit nation in the region, however, has been Peru where more than 100 people have died of exposure and respiratory infections blamed on the extreme weather over the past few days. In Puno, a city high in the Andes, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, the thermometer plunged to -23 celsius (about -10 fahrenheit), down from a normal temperature of about 8 celsius (46 fahrenheit).

What I find most surprising about the news reports from the nearby countries is that it's not just the high Andes or the coastal regions that are suffering from the cold. The jungle areas of the Amazon basin are also feeling it. The Peruvian city of Puerto Maldonado, for example, in the steamy far east of the country normally registers temperatures this time of year in the area of 30-35 celsius (85-95 fahrenheit) but this past week the city has seen temperatures plunge to as low as 9 celsius (48 fahrenheit).

Here in Quito, the end of the cold snap has already arrived and today skies were sunny. It was the first day without rain since the first of July. There is still a chill in the air but I'm hoping by tomorrow night I'll be able to stow that second comforter.

¡Achachay!

2010-07-16T17:15:00.000-07:00

"Achachay!" That's what people in Quito say when it's cold.

It is a Quichua word. Quichua is derived from the old Inca language, Quechua, the lingua franca used in the polyglot Inca empire before the Spanish conquest in the 1530s. Quichua is still spoken by the native inhabitants of the Andean sierra that runs down the center of Ecuador, dividing the steaming Amazon valley in the east from the hot and dry lands of the Pacific coast. There are a number of Quichua words in common use by the Spanish-speaking majority in Ecuador today, but to me, none has the same resonance, the same onomatopoeic ability to capture that bone-chilling feeling when an Andean wind whips down from the summit of a nearby peak. "Achachay!" Or -- as has been my situation these past few weeks -- when you step out of a warm bed into the chill of an unheated Quito apartment. "Achachay!"

For people from temperate climates, the Equator can conjure nasty images of extreme heat, of undulating waves of hot, sticky air, Conrad-esque scenes of languid Europeans driven half mad by the sun and the heat. At best, the Equator can evoke thoughts of a cool drinks sipped under a leafy palms or on the veranda of an exotic hotel with a decadent, imperial sounding name like the Raffles, or maybe the Peninsula.

But here in Ecuador -- a country that takes its name from the Ecuator itself -- it's freezing. That's right, North America and Europe may be suffering through heat waves this July, but here on the Equator I'm wearing two shirts and a sweater and am considering pulling on some long underwear.

I'm not exaggerating. The temperature in Quito hasn't risen above 70-degrees in the past two weeks and every day has brought bone-chilling rain, often buckets of it. At night, temperatures regularly drop into the 40s.

Despite the withering equinoctial sun, the high altitudes of the Andean Cordillera keeps Quito's temperatures mild. Mornings and evenings tend to be cool while the days--warmed by the fierce sun high overhead--are balmy and can even get quite hot for a few hours at mid day. This makes for the ideal climate, not unlike Cape Cod or the coast of Maine in the height of summer where residents swap shorts and bathing suits for long pants and sweaters as evening falls. In

fact, the temperatures in Quito are normally so mild that houses are built with neither air

conditioning nor heating. A friend from New York who spent time in Ecuador calls it, "the best climate on the planet."

The problem with this climactic model, however, is that when it's rainy--as it has been every day this month--the sun's warmth doesn't penetrate the clouds to warm things up and the chill of the high Andes predominates (Quito sits at 2800 meters/9,300 ft). Repeat this day after day, and the ground gets get colder and colder and colder and people suffer more and more. (See a picture of cloudy Quito, at right.)

I'm not the only one bewildered. Quitenians themselves don't know what to make of this weather. It seems as if everyone I know is sniffling and coughing and wearing scarves wrapped tight around their necks. Yesterday, I saw a woman in a knit cap and gloves. A common greeting on the streets these days is the questioning lament, "Why is it so cold?" The response is to blame climate change or of all things, global warming, and the underlying tone betrays a real fear this state of affairs is here to stay.

Last year at around this same time I arrived in Quito and stayed nearly two months during which time I didn't rain once. It seemed like paradise then. I'm starting to have doubts about paradise. ¡Achachay!

This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land...

2010-02-18T05:10:00.000-08:00

News this morning the Argentine government has called for restrictions on vessels traveling to the Falkland Islands -- which it insists on calling Las Malvinas -- has renewed fears of another military conflict over those windswept, treeless islands. The Argentine president, Christina Fernandez, stated that from now on, all vessels intending to travel to the Falklands must first obtain permission from Argentina. The British are not amused.

Why the British take seriously anything Fernandez (right) has to say is beyond me. By the way, she is the wife of the former president, Nestor Kirchner; governing Argentina, it seems, is a family affair.

Without getting into the details of the competing Anglo-Argentine sovereignty arguments, it should be pointed out it was the French who established the first settlement on the Falklands, not the British or the Spanish -- from whom Argentina derives its claim.

All this has me thinking about the mess of competing territorial claims and the number of long-simmering border disputes in South America today. We tend not to think about it too much in the United States, but the continent to our south has seen its international boundries fought over for much of the two centuries since the colonies started to break away from Spain. Practically every country in South America has had a border dispute with one or more of its neighbors. Borders there seem to change at a pace that is positively European.

To give you a sense of how tangled are those lines that look so clear on our maps, here is a quick tour of South America's simmering border issues, those that I know of, at least:

Paraguay has claimed land held today by Brazil and Argentina but, to make up for this sore, they took land from Bolivia after the Chaco War of 1935.
Bolivia, while upset about losing the Chaco to Peru, is still smarting from the earlier loss of its access to the sea at the hands of Chile in 1879.
Peru, too, has claims on land taken by Chile in that same war; Chile wanted the rich nitrite and copper mines just beyond its northern border so it went to war with both Peru and Bolivia, defeating them handily.
But Peru can play the agressor, too, as Ecuador well knows. That country still longs for its lost eastern lands -- nearly half of Ecuador's territory. These were taken by Peru in 1941 (see right) when the rest of the world was preoccupied by land grabs elsewhere. With that territory went access to the Amazon over which Ecuadorans believe they have a cultural claim dating back to 1541 when Francisco Orellana set out from Quito and explored the entire length of that river.
Colombia also took jungle land from Ecuador but that doesn't stop Colombia from pining for her own lost territory, now called Panama. Panama won its independence from Bogota thanks to the Teddy Roosevelt -- who wanted to build a little canal there.
Now Venezuela, under Hugo Chavez (right), has been toying around with the biggest land redistribution of them all, an idea that was the dream of his Venzuelan idol and founding father, Simon Bolivar. Under Bolivar's plan, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia (including those pesky Panamanians), would have become one nation called Gran Colombia ruled, no doubt, from Caracas. Chavez thinks this is an idea whose time has come again.

All these disputes are shown in the crazy quilt of a map at left.

But don't think this territorial jostling is ancient history. Besides the Falklands War in 1982, Chile and Argentina almost went to war in 1978 over three frigid, uninhabited islands near Cape Horn. Troops were mobilized and on the brink of attack and only the intervention of the Pope -- that's right, the Pope -- brought the two countries back from the brink.

Where does all this territorial discord come from? Not surprisingly, the disfunction has its roots in Spain's colonial empire. During nearly 300 years of rule, Spain never worried too much if one part of its empire merged at its edges with another. After all, what might cause headaches for local magistrates in America was of little concern to the King. It was all Spain, at the end of the day. But, when that day finally did end and Spain was kicked out of America, the independent states it spawned wanted border clarity and clarity usually goes to the one with the stronger military. Latin diplomats since independence have been digging out old, often contradictory, maps to bolster their claims by showing what their former rulers had in mind regarding the Empire's internal boundries. It's interesting to note that while Argentina today bases its right to rule the Falklands on Spain's 18th Century presence there it fails to acknowledge that in those same days all of Patagonia was governed from Santiago, not Buenos Aires, meaning we should all be raving about the quality of Chilean beef, not Argentine.

This territorial angst explains why there is now an arms race in South America, an arms race the United States has inadvertently helped fuel. The US, in its efforts to assist Colombia crush the drug trade, has made Colombia the leading military power in the region. This, in turn, has caused Colombia's neighbors, Venezuela and Peru -- goaded by Chavez's fiery appeals to Andean-Bolivarean solidarity -- to increase their own defense spending. Chile, seeing Peru bulking up, has put its significant finances to work preparing against an attack from the north; and while they are at it, they might as well strengthen their border with Argentina, just for old time's sake. What does this cause Argentina to do? You got it, they start chewing over that old bone, the Falklands, and we've come full circle.

Passions over the Falklands run high in Argentina. Visitors there can't help but be astonished to see a Falklands memorial (see left) in every town. These serve not just to honor the fallen soldiers of the war but as reminders that "the Malvinas are Argentine." That slogan is repeated everywhere in Argentina, from flags and beach towels to bumper stickers and t-shirts.

I was recently made aware of how deeply ingrained is this longing for those inhospitable islands and why the belligerence won't go away any time soon. Last year I met a couple from Austria -- no stranger to the pain of lost territory. They had been living in Argentina for several years but had recently decided to take their elder son out of local kindergarten classes. "We knew we had to do something," said the mother, "when he came home from school one day singing a song about how the Malvinas were Argentine and how they were going to get them back with the blood of their sons. They teach this in kindergarten! That was enough for me."

They have since decided to move back to Europe; they are planning to settle in Spain.

In Praise of Santiago de Chile

2010-02-14T05:05:00.000-08:00

Events of the past few days in Chile have compelled me to revisit this post I started a while ago but never finished. (I started writing this in early February and now it is the first day of March.) As I scan the news, I realize with sadness that many of the beaux-arts buildings I mention about below were damaged, some severely. But my post has nothing to do with the earthquake. Instead, it is about my impressions of a city I have recently grown to care for very much, as it appeared to me in happier times.

********

If Buenos Aires is the Paris of South America, the austral City of Lights, then I like to think of Santiago as the southern hemispheric Nice or, to stretch a point, Barcelona.

To me Santiago de Chile is a like a Mediterranean city which eclipsed by the boulevards and architectural glories of the capital city in Paris (or Madrid), nevertheless possesses its own, more relaxed charm, benefiting from better weather, brighter light, and a spectacular natural setting. So, while Santiago may be overshadowed by the romance, the reputation, and the sheer size of its sister capital on the other side of the Andes it is well worth a visit by anyone thinking about a trip to South America.

To the first-time visitor, Santiago de Chile seems more European than Latin with wide, tree-lined boulevards and gently curving modernist apartment buildings. Bike-lanes crisscross the city and leafy parks are seemingly everywhere. The confident Santiagoans take ample advantage of both. At rush hour, young women race to work on bicycles, their skirts billowing behind and in the parks, the crisp Mediterranean summer sun is filtered by the leaves and lovers, oblivious to the gawking pedestrians, embrace on shade-darkened lawns.

My favorite of the parks is Bustamante, a wide strip of peace between two boulevards not far from the commercial center of town. Here I first discovered the joys of the cafe literario. A relatively new phenomenon in Santiago, these are city libraries that double as internet cafes. They are extremely popular. In Parque Bustamante, the cafe literario is an airy, two-story glass and concrete structure whose lines are mirrored and elongated by a reflecting pool (see right, in a nice night-time picture). The ground floor -- where eager cafe customers jostle for the rare unoccupied seat -- is entirely open to the breezes. From there, the vista is one of silver water reflecting blue sky and a ring of green all around. The effect is idyllic.

Santiago does not have an old colonial center like many other Latin capitals. What it does have, however, is a wealth of beaux-arts and Modernist buildings. It is as if in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the city tried to make up for its deficit of memorials to the distant past by an enthusiastic embrace of the contemporary. At the end of the 19th century it was the beaux-arts movement that held sway in the city. Chile's leading families and the capitalists, newly rich from the copper and nitrite mines in the north, poured their money into urban palaces. Today, these ornate structures, heavy with cornices and statuary and imposing arches and lintels point to a desire for bourgeois respectibility in a country attempting to show itself and its new wealth to the world.

One of my favorite neighborhoods, downtown, near the Universidad de Chile, is composed entirely of beaux-arts buildings. Narrow cobble-stone streets wind through Paris-Londres, as the neighborhood is called. It is named after the two main streets. Car traffic is rare in Paris-Londres and students and tourists generally stroll down the middle of the streets, the better to admire the stately buildings on either side.

As Modernism was sweeping Europe in the early decades of the last century Santiago, not to be outdone, abandoned the beaux-arts and rushed to embrace the new style of construction. Heavy ornamentation was left behind in favor of Modernism's clean, curving concrete forms and corner-wrapping windows. To the lover of this style of architecture, Santiago is endlessly fascinating. Entire city blocks were built in the 30s and 40s and the mechanicalinear lines of those blocks have been pleasantly softened over the years by rows of stately trees.

Today, Santiago is a bustling, contemporary city of five million people. It is also surprisingly efficient. To the traveler who arrives directly from another South American city it is this efficiency that may be the most striking sign of Santiago's difference, of its non-Latin character. Where other regional cities -- Mexico, Quito, Guatemala -- are terrifying for pedestrians, in Santiago the automobile, at least in the urban core, seems an afterthought. A web of pedestrian malls make strolling downtown a joy. Outdoor cafes fill these streets and compete with ice-cream vendors, newsstands, and shoeshines for attention. And even where there is traffic, the pedestrian reigns supreme. Unlike in many other Latin cities, drivers in Santiago strictly obey the traffic lights and are scrupulous about stopping for pedestrians.

One warm summer day, while sauntering beneath the trees along one of these walking streets I came across a large crowd. About fifty or more people were standing in a rough circle, chattering excitedly, and point their arms upwards. I immediately thought there must be a jumper on a ledge and scanned the rooftops with excitement and dread. I soon realized my gaze had gone too high, however. The crowd was looking not to the buildings, but rather to a tree just in front. There, on a branch halfway up the tree an owl was perched. It was large, tranquil, and seemingly very much in its element, oblivious to the stir it had created in the crowd below. I was amazed. Hours later I passed the spot again. The owl was still there.

Santiago has the most efficient public transit system in Latin America. Its subway is a thing of beauty and the people are justifiably very proud of it. Trains are frequent, clean and crowded. They are so crowded in fact that during rush hour you generally have to let one or two trains pass before one comes along with enough room to squeeze in. But, they come with such frequency that I can't recall ever waiting longer than two or three minutes between trains. The subway was started in the years of the military dictatorship in Chile but its expansion continues today with several new stations opening every year (see left).

Skyscrapers have sprouted up in new neighborhoods that threaten to pull business away from the central core. I met several residents who admitted to seldom visiting the old downtown anymore. Their loss, I thought, but the movement to the taller neighborhoods may, sadly, be inevitable. Paradoxically, it is these new skyscrapers, with their tendency to draw the eye upwards, that serves to remind Santiagoans of the most powerful aspect of their urban environment, the mountains.

Santiago is a city surrounded by the high Andes. And on days when the smog has lifted, the white-topped mountains look so close, so bold as to appear unreal, like a stage set built behind the city as if to remind us that no matter how high we strive, no matter how tall the skyscrapers become, nature can always do better.

Buenos Dias, Don Fidel

2009-12-05T08:32:00.001-08:00

For the vast majority of my life I have suffered the indignity of hearing my surname butchered. Most Americans just can't seem to wrap their tongues around those French vowels. Although, I must admit, it's a great way to screen for telemarketers. "Good evening. Is Mr. Du...aah, Mr. Dup-ROY at home?" Click.

My first name -- however unusual -- presents no problems of pronunciation for my countrymen.

But that's not the case here in South America. Like the seasons or the directional flow of a flushing toilet, things here are reversed. My last name is not problem. It is my first name that trips people up. So, to make things easier, it was suggested I adopt a nickname. I've become Fidel.

It works wonders. A few weeks ago I was on the phone trying to make a reservation for a minivan to the airport. Here's an excerpt of the conversation:

me - Good afternoon. I'd like to reserve a minivan tomorrow morning to the airport.

she (reservation agent) - Your last name, sir?

me - Dupuy.

she - First name?

me - Fielding.

she - What? I didn't get that.

me - Fielding.

she - Again, please.

me - Fiel-DING!

she (playing the audibility card) - I can't hear you, sir. Your name again?

me ("sigh") - Fidel.

she - Ah, claro! Fidel Dupuy. Your phone number? ....

The next morning, bright and early I'm outside the hotel waiting as the minivan pulls up. Smiling broadly, the driver hops out and shouts, "Buenos dias, Don Fidel!"

So, I've become Fidel. It saves a lot of time, actually.

Defending the Revolution

2009-08-25T15:40:00.000-07:00

That photogenic populist, Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador, is in Cuba this week.

First the papers here in Ecuador reported he was going there for vacation with his family--I would too, if it weren't such a hassle. Later, the papers mentioned he'd be getting a medical check-up while there. Strange. Ecuador has good doctors and, as president, you'd think Correa could pretty much get whatever medical care he might need right here. (I wonder what Ecuador's doctors think about this?) The latest report from Cuba shows Correa in a tete-a-tete with a very hale Fidel Castro.

It is no secret Correa is an admirer of Cuba--he is firmly in the left-field of Latin leaders--and in this he's joined by most of his countrymen, who tend to feel rather kindly towards Cuba. This doesn't bother me. What does trouble me, however, is Correa's recent decision to bring a peculiar Cuban innovation to Ecuador. Which of Cuba's attributes does he have in mind? Cuba's vaunted public health system? Its post-secondary education model? The island's excellent disaster response and relief program? Nope. None of the above.

What Correa wants to copy is Cuba's revolutionary defense committees (comites de defensa de la revolucion, or CDR).

The CDR is Cuba's grass-roots spying program, in which neighbors report on each other to the government which, thereby, knows the whereabouts and doings of each person in every corner of the country. This neighborhood network has been one of the most effective organs of repression in Cuba since it was founded shortly after the revolution. The CDR was designed, in Fidel Castro's words, to be "a collective system of revolutionary vigilance" and to report on "who lives on every block, what everyone does, what relations each has with tyrants, and with whom each person meets." Yikes!

The other country in the region that has adopted Cuba's revolutionary defense committees is Venezuela. And what has happened there since Hugo Chavez instituted them? He has gone from being a one-term, interim president, to someone who seems to covet a sojourn in office that can only be described as Castrian. So far, he's at year eleven of his "revolutionary" reign and showing no signs of stepping down soon.

So, why would Correa want to replicate the creepy CDR program in Ecuador? And exactly what revolution is he so concerned about protecting?

Ecuador's "revolution" was a quiet one. In fact, it was no revolution at all. Correa may call it the "Citizen's Revolution" (la revolucion ciudadana) but it was really a series of populist reforms he instituted after his election two years ago, including a massive public works program, changes to the labor laws, etc. The culmination was a successful referendum to draft a new constitution, which was hastily done and rushed to a vote in a cowed--and soon to be disbanded--Congress. No Federalist Papers here, no provincial ratifying conventions, just Correa in the bully pulpit hammering away with the rhetoric of the citizen's revolution.

But now, Correa is concerned these changes may be at risk. In a recent speech, he warned the citizen's revolution is in jeopardy to unnamed elites in Ecuador. But what elites is he talking about? The right wing, business-dominated party that long controlled the county is in tatters after the death last year of its ancient and wizened leader. The press seldom criticizes Correa, so awed are they by his popularity and communication skills. He's changed the constitution and sacked the entire Congress; its successor, the national assembly, is full of Correa's political allies. So, with the assembly in his back pocket, a new constitution, a nearly silent press, and sky-high approval ratings, one wonders what Correa is so afraid of.

The answer, it appears, is Honduras. The revolutionary defense committees, he says, are necessary to prevent what happened in Honduras from happening in Ecuador. Correa is referring to the recent ousting of Honduras's populist president, Manual Zelaya, by the military--on the orders of the country's Congress, it should be pointed out--to prevent him from holding an illegal referendum to change the constitution. Correa is wagering that if he can effectively organize his supporters into neighborhood cells as in Cuba and Venezuela he'll be able to avoid being overthrown should his Assembly ever turn on him. (See those defenders of revolution, the red-scarfed Chavez and the dapper Correa, left.)

I asked a few Quitenos what they think of the revolutionary defense committees proposal.

"I think it is all a joke," said one woman. "He's just trying to take our minds off his other problems."

By other problems, she's referring to 1) allegations Correa's brother has been receiving preferential treatment in bidding for government contracts and 2) revelations Colombia's FARC guerrilla movement funneled money to Correa's presidential campaign. Given those headaches--particularly the second one--I'd probably be trying to change the debate, too.

But what about those scary revolutionary defense committees, I asked? Would these work in Ecuador? After all, they have been very successful in helping Chavez keep a vice-grip on power in Venezuela.

"This isn't Venezuela," said another Ecuadorian. "Venezuela's people have never overthrown a president. We do it all the time. We go into the streets. We'll do it again if he isn't careful."

Hmm. Perhaps President Correa does have something to worry about after all.

Is this what's worrying Rafael Correa?

Road Trip

2009-08-24T14:17:00.000-07:00

Driving in Ecuador can be a pleasure.

The country's winding mountain roads weave through spectacular and varied scenery. In the course of an afternoon you can pass from the lush jungle of the Amazon basin to steep valleys where Holsteins graze on emerald pastures beneath snow-capped volcanoes (see left, and the magnificent Cotopaxi, above). Drive a bit further and you're certain to come upon a dry valley whose encircling mountains keep out the rain clouds, giving the land a rich golden brown color and turning the trees a dusty, olive-drab (see below, landscape near Quilotoa).

It's as if you are passing from the jungles of South East Asia to Switzerland and then on to the goldenrod hills of California in the space of just a few hours. I've never visited another country that can boast such variety in so small an area. After all, at about 270,000 sq. miles, Ecuador is only the size of Pennsylvania, New York, and New England.

But for the most part, driving in Ecuador is pure terror.

What makes it so bad? Well, let's start with the narrow, precipice-hugging roads themselves, festooned with white crosses to remind the driver that certain death lies just a few feet to right?

This stress is not fleeting. It lasts hour after hour. I recently drove from Quito to the country's third largest city, Cuenca, in the south, a distance of 432km (268 miles), a bit longer than the distance between New York City and Washington, DC. The trip took 10 hours. The country may be small, but when you're averaging 30 miles an hour, it can feel like Siberia. (See an exhausted me at hour five. "Next stop, Novosibirsk?")

Generally, the main roads are more or less smooth. But almost all the problems result from their narrowness. So far, I've only seen two places in the country where the highway is two lanes in each direction. Most of the time there is one lane each way without any median. If this isn't hard enough to deal with, every few miles the road goes through the center of one small town or another. In town, all traffic slows to a crawl. Even late at night you have to slow down because you never known when there will be a speed bump just waiting to jar your spine.

They love speed bumps in this county. Sometimes these speed bumps are marked. Sometimes they aren't. It only takes hitting one of these once at 40km/hr. before you become very alert to their presence.

Trucks are a constant menace on the roads. When laden, these only manage a few miles per hour on the steep mountain roads, causing long backups. No one can take the pain of driving 10 miles/hr for long so eventually you role the dice with fate and dart out into the oncoming traffic to pass. (See below, trucks in a work zone, on the main road east of Quito.)

The only thing worse than the trucks are the buses. In Ecuador, when you want to insult someone's driving you say they drive like a busero (bus driver). It's not that the buses go slow, far from it. They barrel down the road--generally the middle of it--at high speed. The problem is that they stop whenever and where ever there is a fare. Or a potential fare. And, of course, they don't pull over. They just stop. This, unless you are very far behind, will cause you to 1) slam on your brakes to avoid rear-ending the bus or, 2) pull out into the oncoming traffic to pass it. Your choice.

For a while I thought I could just stay safe in my lane and not pass anyone, even if it meant taking all day and all night to get to my destination. But this doesn't guarantee safety either. There you are, minding your own business in own lane and what do you see up ahead in the distance? A bus, in your lane, in the process of passing someone, and heading right for you. And what's the bus driver doing? Why, he's laying on his horn, warning you to get out of the way.

Another problem are the work zones. These pop up without warning. There you are, finally barreling down the road at speeds approaching 40mi/hr, happy to be making good progress and then--just around the curve--you come face to face with a bulldozer. As you slam on your breaks, the car lurches over the bumps and pits as the smooth asphalt road you were driving on disappears into dusty gravel.

There are very few road signs. And when there is a detour, there are even fewer. The message I took from this is, if you don't know exactly where you're going, you shouldn't be driving. Basically, you have to ask a lot of questions. The problem, however, is the iffy quality of the directions. My favorite was the woman in Salcedo who, when asked where the road to Quito was, pointed to her left and said, "It's just up ahead, on the right."

And did I mention that at night, people here like to drive with their high-beams on?

The highways of Ecuador are the great melting pot of the nation. All aspects of society meet and mingle on the roads. The poor hawk fruit and candies from the shoulders, rushing into traffic whenever it slows. When the poor travel they tend to pile into the backs of pickup trucks and seeing eight to ten people--sometimes with livestock--huddled in the bed of a small truck is not uncommon (see left). The lower middle class--commuting to work or traveling to visit friends and relatives in other cities--prefer to ride the endless stream of smoke-belching buses. It is vacation time and the upper middle class, their cars crammed with kids and gear, choke the roads to and from the beach in their Chevys and Toyotas. Meanwhile, the wealthy, in their shiny, silver SUVs speed past, arrogantly zipping in and out of oncoming traffic to pass the slower-moving vehicles, confident in the German-engineered performance of their cars.

But driving in Ecuador isn't all white-knuckles and adrenalin. I want to take a moment to pay tribute to one of the great pleasures of driving in this country: traffic circle sculpture. Every small town seems to feel the need to erect a piece of attention-grabbing art in the middle of their traffic circles. Sometimes the sculpture reflects local pride (like the giant ice-cream cone in Salcedo) but most of the time the subject matter seems utterly arbitrary. Regardless, they are all fascinating.

Here follows a portfolio of my favorite pieces of rotary art.

Maize. The ear of life.

A big faucet.

This one is fantastic. It looks like the moon is concentrating on trying to get some rest amidst the traffic of Riobamba. I can't tell if that bird is helping matters.

Homage to the hummingbird.

Look at this guy's right hand. Let this be a warning to art students everywhere not to skip foreshortening class.

Paying homage to the llama.

Ethnic pride near the Inca ruins of Ingapirga.

Honoring indigenous headgear?

Welcome to Salcedo, home of the multi-flavor ice cream cone.

Come on, kid, smile. You're in Salcedo.

This guy I call the pied piper of the the Gorgons.

Paying tribute to the potters.

Even the military gets into the act. Here, Pro patria; below, a soldier protects the strategic yellow starburst.

The institute of national development.

The shoe shine kids of Alausi take a break to play torreador.

And my current favorite, the enigmatic shoe-horn of plenty.

All of these sculptures must have a story. I just wish I knew what those stories were. Dissertation topic, anyone?

Feeding the beast. At a pit stop, near Salcedo.

Colibri

2009-08-07T09:02:00.000-07:00

A hummingbird in flight is wondrous. The small body seems to hang suspended without support, the wings beating so rapidly they are imperceptible to human sight (although not to the camera). The rapid, frenetic movements as the tiny bird moves left or down, or sideways or up seem to obey no pattern. Trying to follow the bird's flight is more like following the movements of a bumble-bee than a bird.

Along my regular west to east walk across Quito--back to my apartment after Spanish class--there is a two-block stretch of road so steep that steps replace asphalt. It is an unlikely concession to foot traffic in this pedestrian-unfriendly city and it is one of the highlights of my 40-minute walk. The steps are bordered on either side by a strip of grass and set amidst the grass is a series of stubbly, flowering trees. The trees are in bloom at the moment and the little flowers look like minuscule, orange trumpets. The other day, darting between the flowers, I saw a hummingbird.

The sight of the tiny bird, contentedly sucking nectar just a few feet away left me staring in wonder. I've never been much of a bird watcher, but hummingbirds have always fascinated me. They are so tiny, so delicate, that after staring at one all other birds seem clumsy, lumbering beasts.

Hummingbirds--known as colibri in Spanish (that has a nice ring to it, I think, even better than hummingbird)--are notoriously sensitive to pollution and this city would seem too dirty to harbor the delicate birds. In fact, one of the most exhaust-choked places in my long commute is not two blocks downhill from where I saw the bird. There, the fumes are so bad I am often left coughing and out of breath. How could a hummingbird possibly live so close to that? It must just be a random bird that strayed into town from the hills nearby, I thought. Soon it would either fly away or die, I reasoned, and so I snapped as many pictures of the bird as I could before it tired of my stalking and zipped off to a higher tree.

I found a picture on the internet of a bird that resembles the one I saw (see left, photo by Paul Pratt). It's called a White-necked Jacobin. What a cruel name to give to this lovely bird; it makes the gentle creature sound like a rabble-rousing revolutionary. In my picture of the bird (right) you can see the similar shape of the head and curve of the beak.

The very next day I saw two of the birds working the same tree. I smiled at the thought that my little jacobin had a mate and his life on the rough streets of Quito would not be a lonely one, that his existence here was not a fluke of nature. I imagined the pair having chicks that would--with luck--survive to spread to other trees nearby. At that moment, as I snapped more pictures, a mother and her young son stopped on the steps to stare with me.

The street that is home to all this excitement is Ernesto Noboa Caamano--but everyone here simply calls it Noboa. Ernesto Noboa was a poet. He was born in 1891 in the gritty seaport of Guyaquil and died 36 years later here in Quito. His short life could not have been pleasant. He suffered from neurosis and became addicted to the morphine that gave him temporary relief. I can't yet read his poems but he was an admirer of Poe and Baudelaire so I imagine they must be brooding and dark, just the types of poems I enjoy. I look forward to the day when I can search his stanzas for clues to his life and to life in Jazz-age Quito. But will I find intimations of urban colibri?

A few days later, just after noon when the hot sun draws forth the full fragrance of the flowers, I was amazed to see another hummingbird of an entirely different variety. It had a smaller body than my jacobin but it sported an impossibly long tail. I fumbled blindly for my camera, trying to retrieve it from my backpack without taking my eyes off the tiny bird as it went zipping in and out of view between the branches. Then, for a split second, it stopped and perched on a limb in the bright sunshine, as if posing for his picture. The lucky shot shows him in all his majesty. Of the dozen pictures I snapped during those minutes, only a few show the bird at all. Most are just shots of thickets of branches, leaves, and flowers.

After the bird flitted off out of range for the last time, I rushed home to learn what type of hummingbird I had encountered this time on the smoggy streets of Quito. After looking through dozens of web pages devoted to the hummingbirds of this region, the best I can guess is that my new bird is a Long-tailed Sylph, although the one on Noboa street has a tail significantly longer than the ones in the pictures on line. Perhaps the city version of the bird sports a longer tail than his countryfied counsins I saw pictured on the web; think of it as the avian version of an urbane gentleman in his smoking jacket.

At left you can see my picture of the sylph in flight, its wings a blur as it strains to insert its beak into the horn or the flower, its tail so long that it stretches out of the frame.

Now, every day as I climb the steps of Noboa street on my way home I stop and stare into each of the trees to look for my friends. As I do, I can't help but think that Ernesto Noboa would smile if he knew that on the rough and smoggy streets of Quito--surrounded by walls covered in graffiti--colibri thrive.

Hummingbird Habitat

Morning Edition

2009-08-03T07:01:00.000-07:00

Breakfast is sacred time for me. The food is important--and those who have seen me prepare my breakfast tell me it approaches ritual--but, honestly, what I enjoy most is lingering over the meal. It is quiet time, time to read, time to write, time to reflect.

I so jealously guard this time that no matter when I wake up, breakfast completely fills in the gap between then and when I have to leave the house. It makes no difference if I allow myself 30 minutes or three hours for breakfast, I will always be in a rush at the end and invariably late to wherever it is I need to be.

In my corporate career I attended my fair share of 7:30am breakfast meetings--I even called a few of them--but I never really enjoyed them. I'm not the type who likes the feeling of rushing out of the house to begin the day.

Here in Quito, my breakfast routine is similar in structure to what it was in New York, but the trappings are certainly different. I wake up at six, just before the sun rises over the eastern Cordillera and into my face. I like to be awake to watch as the clouds that invariably cling to the mountains turn pink and yellow with the sun. Sometimes, the illuminated adobe and granite facade of the church down the hill appears to take on the same creamy pinkish cast of the clouds at exactly the same moment (see image at the bottom of this post).

Breakfast begins with tea and Spanish vocabulary at my desk. (I save the excellent Ecuadorian coffee for my afternoon pick-me-up.) The rest of my breakfast I eat a bit later on the patio, in the full face of the sun (see left--can you believe that hat?). Generally, I eat bread and cheese and fruit.

The traditional Ecuadoran cheese is a non-aged cheese (queso fresco). It is bright white and soft, with the cool creaminess of mozzarella and the shape and texture of feta, but without the dryness. At first I was skeptical of it. Now I eat it every day.

Then there is the fruit. There is so much to say about the fruit here in Ecuador that I'll have to devote a future post to the topic. For now, I'll just mention the two in the picture below. Uvillas (little grapes) are a firm, yellow fruit with a slight tartness. They are about the size of grapes and have the skin texture of a tomato. I love the sharp, cool feeling as they pop and release their juice inside my mouth. I eat them by the handful. I've been going through about two pounds a week.

The other fruit in the picture is granadilla (little grenade), a type of passion fruit. To get at the sweet, gloppy fruit inside, you have to crack and peel the hard rind just like you would crack a hard-boiled egg. The grey, gelatinous insides of the fruit, which you eat with a spoon, are hideous. Ask people what it is reminiscent of and you'll get anything from snot to uncooked sheep brains. It is best not to think about these when eating grandilla.

Recently, I've also been eating candied black figs, which are not technically fruit, as far as I'm concerned. These come drenched in honey and are best enjoyed with slices of queso fresco (white cheese) to cut the sweetness of the figs. It's an excellent combination. The perfect finish to a long breakfast.

The NPR program, Morning Edition, has been part of my breakfast routine ever since I moved to New York in 1992. I miss it. Sure, I could listen to Morning Edition on line, but that wouldn't be the same. So, I listen to local radio. Lately, I've been listening to Radio Publica Ecuador (RPE). It's pretty good but if the name implies an NPR equivalent, that's not quite accurate. The station is free of commercials and has a peppy line-up of news, talk, and music--and lessons in Quichua, the language of the country's largest indigenous minority, hosted by my latest heartthrob, the effervescent Marta--but rather than being a station that attempts to reflect the broad range of views in the country, RPE is really the mouthpiece of the government. And in Ecuador, that means it is the mouthpiece of Rafeal Correa, the young, charismatic, and wildly popular president. The New Yorker recently wondered if he might not be "Another Obama." Here he is striding in the surf, Obama-like.

Correa is rapidly changing many aspects of society and government in Ecuador. He recently pushed through a new constitution which abolished the congress. Granted, it was a notoriously corrupt body, but I'm still trying to figure out how laws are now being made in Ecuador. Another constitutional change: abolishment of hourly employment. This was an effort to curb the use of third party contract agencies that paid workers less than minimum wage. What this will do to job creation is beyond me. Correa is an economist and should have been able to come up with a better way to curb wage abuses than by enshrining full-time employment in the constitution.

Like Ecuadorian fruit, Rafael Correa is endlessly fascinating and deserves a future posting here all to himself. But for now I'm interested in his relationship with the media. Almost since his election, Correa has been feuding with the press. Like Obama, he wants to reach out to his legions of supporters without the filter of the news media. But, as Obama is finding out, this is hard to do when the question is not a campaign but the business of daily government.

Correa's latest feud with the media came about a couple of weeks ago when the local press picked up a story that ran in Colombia alleging the FARC--the guerrilla movement in that country--had helped fund Correa's campaign.

It was around this time I started listening to Radio Publica Ecuador. At the height of the controversy, every hour on the hour, there would come a "special message from the government" in which a stentorian voice (not Correa's), harangued the news media, claiming it had been spreading misleading stories about the government. The two-minute long message warned the people to be wary of one-sided reporting and closed by saying the government supported the idea of some third-party watch dog organization to oversee the media and ensure fair reporting.

These messages stopped the day the government sheepishly released evidence showing the FARC's leader had indeed tried to give money to Correa's campaign, although without Correa's direct knowledge.

But this didn't stop the government from pushing its idea of an independent media watch dog. What happened when the government didn't get any takers on this idea? It went ahead and established its own. Independent?

These are exciting times to be a journalist in Ecuador--or simply a media watcher. Meanwhile, the Ecuadoran version of Morning Edition will ensure my breakfast time listening remains entertaining.

Morning twilight in Guapulo

Pasochoa

2009-07-31T13:31:00.000-07:00

About 20 miles south of Quito lies a wildlife reserve called Pasochoa. It is very popular with Quitenos who frequently make day trips there to get away from the smog and bustle of the city and hike its many trails.

In this way it reminds me of Bear Mountain State Park, an hour north--and a world away--from New York City. But the similarity quickly ends. For one thing, at its highest point, Bear Mountain State Park rises no more than 400 meters (1300 ft) above sea level while the Pasochoa Reserve, which sidles up one side of the extinct volcano of the same name, climbs from 2900 meters (9,515 ft) at the park entrance to 4200 meters (13,780 ft) at its summit.

Last weekend I was dispatched to Pasochoa as part of my conditioning regimen. This is an effort by my friends here to toughen me up in advance of three-day trek later in August along part of the old Inca road that ran along the cordillera between Quito and Cuzco. Each weekend I am pushed to hike at a higher elevation.

At Pasochoa, I made it to a point just below the summit. Beyond this the trail becomes virtually inaccessible without technical climbing skills or gear. At that elevation, along a steep and narrow trail, I could only go about 10 steps before resting to catch my breath.

The views were spectacular, but what intrigued me most about Pasochoa was the layout of the park itself and the extreme differences between the flora at the base of the mountain and at its top.

When Pasochoa blew its top thousands of years ago, the force of the eruption went laterally--rather than upwards, the way of volcanoes erupt in our imagination--shearing off an entire side of the mountain. This gives Pasochoa the aspect of an inclined horseshoe, the curved edge at the top, at the rim of the volcano, and the legs extending downward towards the base, the wide gash of the crater in between.

The reserve covers the eastern leg of the horseshoe, up to and including the summit. The trail to the summit runs along the ridge which in some places was only two or three yards wide, dropping precipitously down into the elongated crater on one side and--somewhat more gently--down the exterior slope of the volcano on the other. Near the summit--where the horseshoe is at its narrowest--the far side of the volcano's rim seemed tantalizingly close, just across the deep crater, (see left, the far rim peeking above, in the middle ground of the photo).

From its base to the summit, Pasochoa encompasses three micro climates, each strikingly different. This phenomenon, called micro-verticality, is common in Ecuador and is what allows this small country to possess such a variety of flora and fauna--not to mention agricultural produce. In the country's central Andean strip, for example, each province boasts produce as diverse as hearty cheeses (in the higher elevations) and succulent tropical fruits (in the valleys).

At its base, Pasochoa is covered by a deep blanket of highland rain forest (bosque de neblina montano in Spanish). In the middle elevations comes a sparse and dry evergreen forest (bosque siempre verde montano) reminiscent of the ponderosa lands of western Nevada. And at the highest elevations of Pasochoa are the arid alpine grasslands or, simply, the paramo (paramo herbaceo). The ability to hike from humid rain forest to alpine tundra in half a day is what makes Pasochoa, and Ecuador, exceptional.

The rain forest was lush and damp and the trail was very slippery in places. The trees were full of hanging mosses, creepers, and orchids. Supposedly, 127 species of bird can be found in Pasochoa and most live in this lower zone. Unfortunately, it is also in this part of the reserve where most of the visiting Quitenos are to be found, many with young children in tow; these squealed contentedly, chasing away all the birds from the trail. My goal was to survive a hike to the summit and back, not to bird watch, but it would have been nice to see more birds than just the few that I did. Fortunately, the cries of the children and the chatter of the adults had no effect--at least no visible one--on the orchids.

By the time I reached the middle elevations, the crowds had thinned. The air was noticeably drier and cooler but the sun burned down on my skin.

From this elevation the vista opened up and I could see the distant mountains and the towns nestled in the valleys. Quito itself was obscured by mountains but the city's southern suburbs were clearly visible. Above them, hugging the slopes of the mountains was a patchwork of pasture and cultivated lands, a quilt of greens and yellows and browns. The clouds gave the appearance of hanging low in the valleys but, at 10,000 feet, those valleys could hardly be called low.

By the time I reached the edge of the paramo, at about 3,500 meters (11,500 ft) I was laboring for breath and had to stop and rest for about half an hour; I had been walking since 8am and it was then after 11. Refreshed, I pushed on out of the sparse tree cover and onto alpine grasslands that gave no shelter from the fierce, noonday sun. The day before I had purchased a hideous floppy, wide-brimed Andean hat at a handicrafts center in Quito. I bought it in the hopes it would protect my bald head. Thank God I did. It became a sun helmet, deflecting the vertical rays of the noonday equatorial sun in a wide arc around my shoulders. Without it--or with only a baseball cap, for example--there is no way I could have continued on.

Throughout my slow slog up the paramo I kept thinking of the 16th century Spanish conquistadors broiling beneath their heavy, quilted mail and metal helmets, dragging their tired horses along these upland trails that were built not for armoured cavalry but for the lightly clad incas and their llamas. What, I wondered, but a maniacal lust for gold, could have propelled these Spaniards to advance, day after day, deeper into these regions?

As I neared the summit, I was able to see, edging over the top of a nearby ridge, the snow-covered peak of Antisana far off to the southeast (above, center). At 5,758 meters (18,900 ft) Antisana is one of the highest volcanoes in Ecuador and, although my picture doesn't do it justice, I was awed by its majestic white slopes peaking above the olive green carpet of the paramo.

Near the very top of Pasochoa, where the trail tends towards the vertical and the grasses of the paramo are replaced by rock and lichens and the occasional thorny shrub, I stopped. It was no use to go any further without equipment and a trained guide. I walked off the narrow trail and walked towards the volcano's edge. There I sat down, almost dangling my legs over the rim and looked deep into the forested crater below. Being just below the ridge line, the spot was sheltered somewhat from the winds, allowing bushes and a few small trees to grow. It was a charming spot, absolutely quiet except for the wind, and I felt contentedly exhausted, proud of having made it so far at that altitude. It was just then that I spied, several meters off in the distance, a single bunch of tiny, downward-facing red and orange bell-shaped flowers. They dangled jauntily from a wind-buffeted bush nearly naked of leaves. I marvelled for a moment at how something so delicate could survive in that harsh environment. Then I took a deep breath of thin air and turned to begin the long walk down the mountain.

Earthquake!

2009-07-27T09:55:00.000-07:00

The big news in Ecuador last week: the Village People were cancelling their concerts in Quito and Guyaquil on short notice.

The Village People? Are they really still around? (I once performed in a college skit as the Leather Guy, complete with anatomy enhancing tube sock, but that's another story.) Apparently the Village People are still around and maintain an avid following in distant lands. The papers here speculated the cancellation was due to fears of the Swine Flu which has been on a tear in South America with a dozen deaths in Ecuador and many more further south where the cold weather seems to be breading a hardy new strain for export to the northern hemisphere. I went to the band's web site to find out more. Amidst goofy photographs of the band and its fans I found only this one sentence: "We apologize but due to circumstances beyond our control, Ecuador concerts in July have been canceled." Cowards! The good people of Ecuador deserve a better explanation than that.

For me, however, the big news last week was the earthquake. What earthquake, you ask? Don't worry, it didn't make the papers here either. It didn't even register on the local seismological authority's website. Apparently, this earthquake only struck my house. No one I know here felt or heard a thing. "It probably wasn't an earthquake," said one friend, in an attempt to calm me, "maybe it was just the mountain moving a bit." Holy smokes! Moving mountains? That sure sounds like an earthquake to me.

Seismic activity scares me silly. Of all the things to worry about since arriving in Ecuador last week--volcanoes, maniacal bus drivers, swine flu, and the very real possibility an airplane will fall on my house--earthquakes scare me the most.

So, here's what happened. Late Thursday night--I had just finished my previous posting in which, incidentally, I mentioned earthquakes--I heard what sounded like my upstairs neighbor moving furniture. This happens all the time in my New York place so I thought nothing of it. Only when I heard the sound again did I remember I have no neighbor directly above me here in Quito. The rumblings lasted only two or three seconds and after the second one it was quiet. I heard no commotion in the street above, no sirens, nothing. Somewhat doubting what I had heard, I went back to writing.

Then, about ten minutes later I heard a strange noise emanating from the floor to my left, near the refrigerator. It sounded at first like little claws scampering across the rough tile floor. I looked down expecting to see a mouse. But as the noise increased, I realized I was hearing an ominous cracking rather than the innocent scampering of little rodent paws. All of a sudden I saw the square ochre tiles start to buckle just inches from my feet. I sprang out of my chair--my scalp tingling with fear--and raced around the table. I jumped across the crack to the other side of the kitchen, the uphill side. (I should say here that my fear of earthquakes has been magnified by the design of this house, a good part of which appears to cantilever over the ravine. It makes for stunning views but does little for my phobia.) At that moment, all I could think of was getting myself over as far as possible towards the side of the house away from the edge. I didn't want to be on the wrong side if the crack continued, splitting the house down the middle in one fell swoop, like a machete on a coconut, spilling the contents--including me--down the ravine.

In five seconds it was over. I found myself standing against the far wall, my heart racing, staring at the crack in the kitchen floor. With visions of aftershocks in my mind--can't they sometimes be worse than the initial quake?--I began to think what to do next. First, I put on shoes and a jacket in case I needed to flee the house. But where would I go? This neighborhood is built on the side of a cliff, and many of the houses look much less sturdy than mine. (See right, for a neighboring house that looks just to be waiting for a nice shake.) Then I started to scan my apartment for load-bearing columns. If the earth were to start moving again I wanted to be able to go to the nearest one without thinking.

After about an hour of pacing and fretting and staring at the crack--which admittedly now looks smaller than it did that night--I finally went to bed. There I proceeded to stare up at the ceiling in the darkness, listening for the sound of structural failure. I don't know what time I finally fell asleep, but it was very late and I was fully clothed.

Earthquakes occur with unsettling frequency in Quito. But rather than making the people here more nervous, the frequency of the quakes appears to have disarmed them. They actually seem inured to the possibility that their city could collapse around them at any minute. (See left, from an earlier quake.) They take earthquakes in stride. The people I've told about my experience smile politely--a bit wearily, even--as if listening to a child who has just discovered a rather hum-drum fact of life. This sang-froid goes way back. In the middle of the 17th century, Mariana de Jesus, Ecuador's first saint, had this to say: "In Ecuador there will be no end to earthquakes or to bad governors." (El Ecuador no se acabara por los terremotos sino por los malos gobiernos.)

That sort of soothing fatalism may work for the people of Ecuador but as for me, I'll probably keep sleeping in my clothes for a while. Now, about those airplanes.

Quake damage -- it looked a lot worse while it was happening. Honest.

Up and Down and Out of Breath in Quito

2009-07-18T07:32:00.000-07:00

In Quito, Ecuador's capital, it's all about the hills. And the mountains. And the ravines.

In 1534, the Spanish founders of the city--following colonial custom--decided on a Cartesian grid plan. Sadly, they laid this grid down in the center of a hilly valley scored with steep ravines. Four mountains contain the valley which runs roughly north-south for about ten miles. At the center of the valley, at its narrowest point, the Spaniards found the smoking ruins of the Incan city of Quito, the northern capital of the empire. Ruminahui (right), the last of the great Incan generals, burned the city to the ground--and slaughtered its inhabitants--rather than allowing it to fall to the advancing conquistadors. Despite the carnage, the Spaniards realized that what was a propitious site for an Incan city would serve equally well for a Spanish one. The valley was fertile and the four mountains provided an excellent defense. The snow-covered volcanoes in the distance must have reminded the conquerors of the Sierra Nevada back home.

It all makes for some breathtaking scenery, but for visitors arriving from sea-level to negotiate the streets and steps in the thin air of this city 9200 feet up the Andes, the word breathtaking quickly takes on another meaning.

While the city long ago outgrew its colonial era grid, it hasn't escaped its confining geography. Contemporary Quito, with two million inhabitants, now completely fills the valley. In several places it has spilled over the ridges, swallowing suburbs on the far sides of the mountains. Those mountains, which once provided protection from attack, today trap the exhaust from the city's cars and busses. The already heavy traffic is made worse by the narrowness of the valley, wide enough for only three arteries in the center of town. So, all north-south traffic in the heart of the city is forced onto these three roads. Underground transit has never been seriously considered. Too many earthquakes and landslides. So, the wealthy and middle classes drive while the poorer folk crowd into smoke-belching busses and everyone--regardless of class--sits fuming in choking rush-hour traffic.

Even in the midst of the soothing perpendiculars and wide plazas of Quito's splendid colonial center, the punishing topography is evident. The streets rise and fall like a roller-coster. Many are so steep that steps serve as sidewalks (see right). In an attempt to make the city more conducive to the grid the Spanish filled in many of the ravines, but this turned out to be a short-sighted solution. Water still runs through the ravines and, from time to time, the fill shifts and another red-tiled colonial beauty is lost in a heap of dust and debris. Fortunately, this is rare. Unless there is an earthquake. The other day I went to see a building that had fallen in recently. By some miracle, the facade remained undamaged but the building's original innards were gone. In their place was a handsome open-air performance space and a chic outdoor cafe. Not a bad re-use of the space, but a far cry from the original of my imagination; in my mind's eye I see a serene courtyard edged with fruit trees--a fountain gurgling quietly in the center--and surrounded by a two storied covered arcade to protect against the fierce equatorial sun.

I'm staying in a neighborhood called Guapulo, about four miles from the old town. It is one of those former suburbs on the far side of the mountains that the growing metropolis has devoured. From downtown, Quito's valley rises gradually towards the eastern ridge. But, on the far side of the ridge--where Guapulo is--the land drops precipitously (see left). Here, the houses seem to cascade down the impossibly steep hillside. The one narrow street connecting Guapulo with Quito proper copes with the steep grade by switching back and forth, again and again, in its ascent of the ridge. My apartment building is on the outside edge of this street, perched over a ravine. To reach my door from the street I have to descend four flights of stairs. Going down is fine but going up each step is a burden in the high mountain air. By the time I reach street level my head is pounding and my chest burns. And I still have to climb the ridge.

Cars, their engines straining, speed past, spewing exhaust and kicking up a fine layer of dust as I trudge up the cobblestone street. At the second switchback (left) I take a pedestrian shortcut. This shortcut--if you can call it that--is a dizzying zigzag of steps ascending the hill face. How many steps? 254. Yes, 254 steps. I've counted them. Twice. Just to be sure.

After step 254 the stairs rejoin the road for a final few meters up to the top of the ridge. From there, one can get a fabulous view of Quito spread out below, filling the valley and climbing the mountain on the western side. I could see it, too, if I were not staring at my feet, doubled over in pain, trying to catch my breath and still my swimming head, my eyes watery from the soot.

I'm sure in a few days I will become aclimatized to the altitude and somewhat desensitized to the pollution. Then I'll start enjoying the view.

Life at Zinka's House

2009-05-05T17:57:00.000-07:00

Zinka kissed me.

It happened in her office. A big smile crossed her face when I walked in and, in her rapid, staccato Spanish, she said something more or less unintelligible to me. All I caught were the repeated words, "grande personaje" and something about me having been on TV. She got up from behind her desk and rushed over--waddled would be more accurate for Zinka is not a small woman and does not move very quickly--to plant a big kiss on each cheek. I stood there stammering, embarrassed, blushing certainly and not at all sure what to say or do.

Apparently, I had been in the papers and on TV in the days before and Zinka was overjoyed to have such a client at her humble "hostal." The next morning at breakfast, I heard her proudly telling one of the other guests about me; I did my best to sink behind a pot of tea in embarrassment. I was not expecting this. I had been away for a week in the southern part of Tierra del Fuego and had only just returned that evening to Punta Arenas. The newspaper had written an article about my research shortly after my arrival in Punta Arenas and this, for some reason set off the other stories. Fortunately, I had missed all the hubub, but Zinka had not.

Zinka´s had been my base in Punta Arenas ever since I realized my travels were going to take longer than expected and less expensive lodgings would be necessary. I downsized, trading my $30/night hostal downtown for Zinka´s House, half a mile and half a world away from the town’s leafy central square with its elegant Beaux Artes buildings (see lower left). Zinka´s was 50% less expensive and it showed. But, despite the fluorescent lighting and the sickly lime green walls of my room, despite the sway-backed mattress and the indignity of having a truck stop-sized wheel of toilet paper in the bathroom, and despite the neighborhood rooster that would wake me every morning at 5am, I actually liked my life at Zinka´s.

It had less to do with the house and more to do with the people, but the house is not without charm. Zinka´s House--that’s the name of the hostal, "Zinka´s House", in English, though no one there speaks a word of that language--is a rambling, one story affair with several outbuildings, all wedged behind a painted white metal fence. Located in the midst of the town’s drab Croatian quarter, Zinka´s House stands out. Its fire-engine red walls and tidy white trim present a bright contrast to the dingy buildings all around. In her front yard, hard against the fence, is a pretty little garden overflowing with gladiolas, irises, and other flowers the names of which I don’t know. Bunches of rhubarb--harvested for Zinka´s excellent rhubarb jam--fringe the garden and the sides of the buildings. The flowers and the rhubarb are real, but the centerpiece of the garden is a peculiar still life of plastic tulips around a two-foot high plastic snowman perched in a small, wooden wheelbarrow. This should be in jarring contrast to the lush living flowers and the rhubarb but at Zinka´s kitsch combines with the authentic and somehow it all just works.

Little Croatia is a run-down section of Punta Arenas. The houses there are mostly little more than single story frame boxes with corrugated siding and roofs. Here and there you stumble upon the occasional "Magallenic" style house of the early 1900s with gingerbread trim and steep mansard roofs or perhaps one of the sleek functionalist houses from the 1930s and 40s with its porthole windows and curving, poured concrete walls (at left, top and bottom). Both styles are plentiful in the city’s tonier neighborhoods but in Little Croatia they seem out of place, forlorn reminders of the days when the neighborhood was a leafy, well-to-do suburb and not the dusty barrio it has become. The houses of Little Croatia today are generally painted a dull white or yellow, or a splotchy light brown. Graffiti covers virtually every building (lower right). Some of the houses are left unpainted entirely, rusting into a reddish-brown that blends with the unpaved sidewalks. Trucks and tractors are parked randomly about on Zinka's street, spilling out of garages onto the crumbling, broken-edged strips of dirt and concrete that masquerade as sidewalk.

Dogs are everywhere in Little Croatia. The strays are good natured, dirty things that lope along, greeting you with a slight wag of the tail as they go happily about their business. The ones behind the fences, in contrast, are mean, bitter beasts. They growl and bark at everything that passes, straining at their chains, eyes bulging, spray leaping from angry jaws. In the land of the free, a chained dog is an unhappy dog.

To call the neighborhood Little Croatia is no exaggeration. Not only is there a Croacia street, nearby is the Croatian Consulate itself. A Croatian school is down the street. All the shops seem to have Croatian names: Buljan, Serka, Yankulic, etc. There is even a sign on one building that simply reads, "Clinica Croacia." What does this mean? Are the doctors all Croatian? Or does it refer to the patients they treat? As if to say, "Croats only. Others need not apply."

Immigration is THE major theme in the history of Tierra del Fuego and southern Patagonia. The first immigrants to the region were the Swiss in the 1850s, followed quickly by the French. The British arrived when the huge sheep estancias (ranches) were set up, bringing stock and know-how from the nearby Falkland Islands. Asturians from northern Spain followed, as did Germans. The first big wave of Croatian immigrants came shortly before the turn of the 20th Century, providing strong-backed, cheap labor, not just for the estancias but also for the sawmills that were springing up all over the vast forests of the Fuegian fjords to the south. The Croats of Tierra del Fuego remain a tight-knit community today, their identity fueled no doubt by pride in Croatia’s independence in 1991.

Before then the community in Punta Arenas lived in Little Yugoslavia. The consulate was the Yugoslavian Consulate and the street was Yugoslavia Street. You get the picture. But, before there was a Yugoslavia the Croats in Chile were called "Autrichos." To me, this seems a cruel thing to call the poor devils who were, for the most part, trying to flee the oppression and poverty they faced at the hands of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire to which Croatia then belonged. (See Croatian coat of arms, right.)

European immigration not only gave Punta Arenas its fine architecture, it also led to literacy and primary schooling statistics that were off the charts compared with the rest of Chile and South America. But the authorities in Santiago worried the large European presence in the strategic Straits of Magellan might prove too tempting to one of the imperial powers in Europe. This fear was not entirely irrational. During WWI, for example, German residents of Punta Arenas openly supplied the Kaiser's warships with food and coal while they hid in the fjords. The town's doughty Britishers dutifully reported the squadron's whereabouts to the Admiralty in London. A fleet was sent south to intercept and the result was the Battle of the Falklands, one of the largest naval encounters of the war. (See left, the cruiser Dresden, in hiding in Chile, 1914.)

So, in the first two decades of the 20th Century Santiago set out to dilute the European population in the far south by encouraging a second migration, targeting the mixed-race farmers and fishermen of the dismally poor island of Chiloe to the north. These low-paid laborers were a boon to the burgeoning economy of Punta Arenas but they forever changed the complexion of the city. Today, the Chiloten presence dominates and, of the many European groups that once ran things in town, only the Croats remain a distinct, vibrant community.

Zinka is the uncrowned queen of this Croatian community and like any royal she has her court. It is comprised of two permanent residents, Maria and Georgio, and a host of rotating visitors who come to sit at her desk and take a serving of tea and gossip. It is a never-ending stream of visitors she hosts; over many days at Zinka´s, I can think of only one instance in which I saw her alone in her office.

Maria acts as the palace chamberlain. Nothing gets done without her. She serves breakfast, does the linens, looks after the guests, and generally keeps the place humming. She is constantly on the go, moving at a brisk trot. She’s an attractive, slim woman of a hard-to-determine age. She may be 35. She may be 50. Somehow, despite all she accomplishes, she seems never to be far from Zinka. This is important because Zinka can’t function without her. Even the simplest question never fails to fluster Zinka. A question like, for example, ¨Zinka, do you have any rooms available for tomorrow?¨ causes her to sputter, then pause. This is quickly followed by a shout for Maria who instantly appears, calming Zinka, providing the desired answer, moving on.

Georgio is the outside man and I think of him in the role of court jester. Before I knew his name, I did not realize he was a man at all. I’ve never met a more androgynous figure. Georgio stands about four and a half feet tall, has a bowl-cut hairdo, a high, squeaky voice, and wears his jeans pulled up high above his waist, the same multi-colored acrylic sweater tucked in tight, day after day. I never quite learned what he does around the place. I believe he tends the garden. Honestly, anything else would seem too strenuous. One day, when I returned late to Punta Arenas and found Zinka´s House full and my regular room unavailable, Georgio was dispatched to take me around to another hostal in the neighborhood. I saw him make a move to take one of my bags, edging for my backpack which stood almost as tall he. Terrified he would topple under the weight of it, I jumped in and, thanking him, handed him my bookbag instead.

Finally, there is Zinka herself. She is an exuberant woman, short and plump, in her late fifties or early sixties, with a luxurious head of blonde hair she wears in an ornate bun on top of her head. Her presence fills the small office that doubles as the hostal´s reception. Her voice penetrates the surrounding walls and she speaks in a rapid-fire Spanish almost impossible to understand; even fluent Spanish-speakers claim to sometimes have a hard time following her.

Every visit to Zinka's office never failed to intimidate me. I felt like a poor supplicant at a royal audience. Generally, I would pause a few seconds behind the always-closed door, steeling myself for the enormity of the encounter. From behind the door I'd hear Zinka´s rapid, booming voice in conversation with one of the neighborhood courtiers or with Maria or Georgio, either of whom--often both--were likely to be squeezed into the little office, too. Just over the left shoulder of the guest’s chair, a television blares, adding to the din. I knock timidly on the door and Zinka´s voice booms out, ¨Adelante! Adelante.¨ I go in. A torrent of unintelligible sentences tumble from her lips. Is she talking to me, I wonder? I stare blinking, bewildered. Then, a smile or wink from Zinka makes me realize, yes, indeed, she is talking to me. But what is she saying? I panic. She repeats herself. Maybe I catch a word or two, maybe not. I ask her to speak more slowly, please. Generally, this goes on until I either figure out what she’s saying or until Maria swoops in to sort things out. Half the time I leave the office so flustered I find I’ve forgotten to ask the question that propelled me there in the first place.

Zinka´s office is decorated as a kind of shrine to all things Croatian and to Zinka herself. On the walls are several large travel posters of scenic Croatian towns. Croatian knick-knacks, colorful ethnic plates, and other handicrafts are there, too. And then there are the pictures. Some show Zinka with the Croatian president on his visit to Punta Arenas. Others are of Zinka dancing with various handsome men, Slavic dignitaries, I imagine. There are pictures of Zinka in full ethnic costume--red skirt, white apron, heavy silver jewelry, her long hair in braids--marching at the front of Punta Arenas´s Croatian day parade, and on and on, filling what seems to be every square foot of wall space in the office.

The place of honor, however, on the wall just behind her chair, is reserved for a larger than life photo of Zinka herself. It is a portrait of Zinka in full ethnic dress, a smile on her face and a mischievous glint in her eye, her right hand jauntily grasping the shoulder strap of her dress, as if to say, ¨Come along, young man, Let me show you the charms of Croatia.¨ It is a spectacular image and when you stand in her office, across the desk from Zinka herself sitting beneath that photograph, it is all you can do to keep your eyes fixed on the original. You strain every bit of your concentration to keep focused on her but it is impossible, your eyes can not help but dart back to that photograph. You feel intimidated and elated at the same time, as if in the presence of royalty or perhaps some Latin American dictator whose cult of personality is enormous and meticulously tended and yet so fragile its iconography must extend even to the seat of power itself.

Bizarre, and yet compelling. Kitsch combining with the authentic. But somehow it all works. Such is life at Zinka´s House.

The Road to Fagnano

2009-04-10T12:42:00.000-07:00

At the top of the second range of mountains the lake finally came into view, an inverted triangle of pale blue twinkling amidst the green and white and grays of the forested mountains outlining its edges. “There it is,” I said to myself. “Fagnano.” I depressed the brake pedal and the wheels of my rental car skidded a bit on the gravel. I didn’t pull over. No need. I hadn’t seen another vehicle in over an hour, and no more than half a dozen all day. Besides, the road, bounded by rock on one side and a steep drop on the other, was too narrow for pulling over.

Now, nearing noon, after five hours of driving, I was finally in sight of Lago Fagnano. The lake is long and narrow, hemmed in by mountains perpetually topped with snow. It stretches east to west for 70 miles, more than half the width of Tierra del Fuego. Four-fifths of the lake is in Argentina, the remainder lies in Chile. The lake is pristine. It is fed by glaciers on its western side and these give much of the lake a milky, turquoise color. Only at the very eastern end of the lake do the surrounding mountains diminish. There they finally sink into rolling hills that foretell the endless brown grasslands of the pampas just beyond.

To the native Selk’nam (also called Ona) the lake was sacred. They called it Kami which, according to one source, means great waters. But the holy lake had neither the power to hold its original name nor protect the people who worshiped it; the Selk’nam were wiped out by the ranchers who coveted their lands and by the missionaries who coveted their souls. But there must have been some sorcery in the lake. How else could a body of water this large have remained hidden from the whites as long as it did? The town of Ushuaia, settled in 1871, lies just over the mountains to the south, not 15 miles as the crow flies. The first permanent settlement in the region, Punta Arenas, dates back to 1848 and just ten miles or so to the west of the lake is Admiralty Sound, an arm of the Strait of Magellan that had been visited by mariners for centuries. And yet the lake was not seen by whites until 1890.

In that year a joint Chilean/Argentine hydrographic team – in a rare display of amity between those countries -- finally discovered the lake. They named it Fagnano, in honor of Monsignor Jose Fagnano (at left), one of the pioneering missionaries of the Salesian Order, recently arrived to evangelize among the natives of Tierra del Fuego.

The Salesian Order was founded in Italy by Don Bosco, later Saint Giovanni Bosco (right). Don Bosco (1815-1888) was a man prone to dreams. In one of his earliest a voice provided the inspiration for the order’s pedagogy: "Not with blows, but with charity and gentleness must you draw these friends to the path of virtue." With those words his order grew, and grew rapidly, but nowhere would it have more impact than in Patagonia. Even today it is difficult to overestimate the role of the Salesian Order in the region.

A much later dream, around 1876, would provide the impetus for the Salesian move into Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. In recounting this dream, Don Bosco describes having seen “an immense plain” confined by “abrupt mountains.” On that plain he saw natives fighting against Europeans. “I trembled before such a spectacle,” he claimed. Then his dream foretold the role his order would play in that far off land:

"How to convert such barbarous peoples?...I saw our missionaries moving
forward across those savage hordes; they taught them and the savages heard,
pleased; they taught them and the savages learnt, diligently"

The Salesians, with Jose Fagnano at their head, heeded Don Bosco's call and traveled to the far reaches of South America. There, they quickly fanned out across Tierra del Fuego, establishing missions and schools (see right, the mission at Dawson Island) to bring the Selk'nam "with charity and gentleness" to the path of virtue. Within a few short decades the last of the Selk'nam would be dead.

Few people live on the shores of Lago Fagnano today. At the very eastern end of the lake, on the Argentine side there is a small town of about a thousand people. On the Chilean side of the lake, however, there lives only one man. I was on my way to meet that man.

If you can live more or less by yourself for more than twenty years in one of the most remote places on earth; and if during that time you can build three houses by hand, transporting ALL the materials on horse-back three days over two mountain ranges -- except for the lumber, of course, which mill yourself; if you can wrestle sheep, and cattle, and horses to the ground; if, at age 65, you can scamper up a mountain trail without a huff or a puff, leaving much younger men scrambling to keep up, you just may be tough enough for the job currently being held by the amazing German Genskowski.

German is the first true pioneer I have ever met. He will, in all likelihood be the only one. Along with his nephew, Rodrigo, and one hired hand, German (pronounced "herr-MAN") runs a 3,500 hectare ranch on a more or less flat piece of land between the mountains and the shore of Fagnano. German´s wife spends the summers with him but she says she is too old and too much of a city person to manage the winters in that harsh, snowy place so she decamps to the regional capital of Punta Arenas for much of the year. Children and grandchildren visit occasionally.

“You must talk to Genskowski,” people in Punta Arenas kept telling me. “Genskowski will know where those mountains are.” I was showing pictures of landscapes painted by Rockwell Kent in Tierra del Fuego in 1922, asking if anyone knew where I could find the places he captured. Tierra del Fuego is indescribably vast and dozens of mountain ranges crease its western half so, naturally, everyone gave me conflicting conjectures as to the locations of the scenes Kent had painted. But all were certain that if anyone would be able to identify the places it would be German Genskoweski. Finally, after hearing “Genskowski’s your man” one too many times I decided to go meet him.

Getting to him would not be easy. While Lago Fagnano lies only about 120 miles from Punta Arenas as the crow flies, it takes more than eight hours by car; two hours along a paved highway to reach the ferry across the Strait of Magellan and then six hours on a miserably narrow, dusty dirt road to the lake. German’s land, called Estancia Fagnano (estancia means ranch), is well beyond the reach of power and telephone lines, so I could not call him to warn him of my intentions. I would have to hope he would agree to talk to me.

To make matters worse, the last stretch of road leading to the lake--despite being clearly marked on my map--is still under construction and off-limits without special permission from the Chilean army corps of engineers building it. This being Chile, I was advised to go first and ask permission later. Sure enough, after nearly six hours choking down dust, I finally reached a barricade with signs indicating I was entering a restricted area. “Danger” read one, “Blasting Ahead.” But I had already glimpsed the lake and nothing was going to turn me back now from that promised land. Fortunately, the barricade was up so I was able to escape the censure of actually raising it.

I drove forward cautiously, not so much because I was in defiance of the Chilean Army but because the road -- clearly under construction -- was even more terrifying than before, narrow and unstable. After about a mile, I came across some soldiers operating heavy road-building machinery. They looked at me suspiciously as I approached. But when I told him who I was going to see they smiled and gave me directions. German, apparently, is a legend not just to the city-dwellers of Punta Arenas.

Two miles further along I came across a clearing in the woods by the road where a group of people were gathered around a corral, appraising the horses within. I parked the car, took a deep breath for courage, and started walking towards them. An older man, wearing a floppy-brimmed leather hat broke away from the group and sauntered over to meet me. He was of medium height but slim and wiry, and he walked with the slight, bow-legged saunter of a man who spends a lot of time in the saddle. I told him, in my stumbling Spanish, who I was and the purpose of my visit, and that I was looking for German Genskowski, who I was told might be able to help me. He looked at me a moment and then glanced at his boots. Looking up again, with only a slight approximation of a smile, he replied that he was German Genskowski and he would help me. But then he added, with a wave of his arm towards the group clustered around the corral, "I'm busy at the moment. Go to the house and wait for me there," he instructed. "I will be there in a couple of hours."

At the house -- a tidy, two-story yellow plank structure with a red tin roof and a Chilean flag flying proudly in front -- I met his wife. She was making lunch but she stopped to offer me a cup of coffee. We tried to converse but my limited Spanish and the constant chatter of her young grandson made anything beyond a few pleasantries impossible. Finally, leaving her to her work, I told her I would take a walk around the grounds. Through the kitchen window she pointed out a trail that would lead me to the lake.

I walked through deep woods of tall deciduous beech (nothofagus pumilio), called lenga in Spanish. The limbs and trunks of these trees were covered in a spindly, hanging moss that reminded me of the Spanish moss of the American deep south, but the heavy, hot air I associate with that was absent. Instead, I was bundled against the cold and damp of the Fuegian summer, where even in the warmest months the thermometer seldom goes much above sixty degrees and everyone goes about carrying a raincoat and hat.

The bark of the lenga trees and the pale moss gave the forest a soft, grey-green, almost bluish tinge. A deep quiet prevailed under the cathedral of those trees and the soft, spongy ground muffled my steps. This was my first walk in a lenga forest and that hushed sense of calm would never cease to amaze and charm me throughout my stay in Tierra del Fuego.

Even in the woods it was clear this was a working ranch. Here and there I came across sheep lying in a clearing, and the paths were littered with their droppings. In several places I passed racks of sheep and cattle hide stretched out to dry, sheets of hair and skin, stiff with dried blood. I even saw occasional piles of bones, testament to on-the-spot slaughtering or an impromptu asado (barbecue), green mold betraying the decomposition to which all organic matter in that damp land quickly succumbs.

I marveled at the energy that had built this ranch, and built it entirely by hand, without any heavy machinery of any kind. Until three years ago, before the road, this place was entirely isolated. All material needed to be brought in on horseback from the road head at Vicuna, three days ride to the north. Before the road, German would drive his cattle once a year over the mountains to the road head -- with cattle, the trip takes four days – where a truck would be waiting to take the stock to Punta Arenas.

German is a shy man and he didn’t open up to me until late the first day. At lunch, he hardly spoke a word to me. He was preoccupied with the two municipal veterinarians who had come that day to the ranch to take blood samples from the livestock. German later told me this was the first time in his twenty-five years on the ranch that a veterinarian had visited. “It’s because of the road,” he said, shaking his head. It was the first of many denunciations I would hear from him about this road that was so disrupting to his long-established way of life. He sighed. “Without the road they would never have come here.”

At lunch I struggled, in Spanish, to tell the group around the table the story of why I had come to Chile and what had brought me to the shores of far away Fagnano. "I am following the route," I explained, "of a fellow 'Norte Americano,' a painter, who had traveled in this land back in 1922." I went on, trying to make it clear that I believe he had even stayed at the site of this very ranch, then called Estancia Isabel.

As were getting up from the table, German’s nephew, Rodrigo, who had been quiet throughout lunch, came over to me and said, in flawless English, "My uncle has Mr. Kent's book but he can not read it because it is in English; but I have read it twice. I will go get it." And then he ran upstairs to fetch his uncle’s copy of the book. I stood there flabbergasted wondering why he had let me struggle for half an hour in my pidgin Spanish.

Rodrigo is in his mid twenties. He is tall and handsome, with a broad smile and a luxurious sweep of jet-black hair that he usually keeps covered under a crocheted tam-o-shanter. He grew up in Punta Arenas and studied English translation in school. Then, a few years ago, he decided he preferred life on the shores of Fagnano so he packed his bags and moved in with his uncle, learning all he can in the hopes he can take over the lonely ranch one day. He is an eager student of the ranching life. When I was there he was engaged in taming a wild horse they had recently captured. I saw the horse on my walks, a magnificent grey mare with a dark mane and tail. She was tied up in a small clearing in the woods, bounded on three sides by a river that flows into the lake. The horse would start whenever she saw me and pull frantically at her rope, nostrils flaring. Not sure the rope would withstand the exertions, I always gave her a wide berth.

In the afternoon, I watched spellbound for over an hour as the veterinarians took blood samples from German's herd of sheep. One by one, German, Rodrigo, and the ranch hand would capture a ewe, bleating in terror, and flip it on its haunches. This, surprisingly, would immediately calm the animals; in some cases they actually appeared to drop off to sleep in that position. The vet would then put a slender rubber hose around the animal’s neck to reveal the jugular vein and quickly take a sample. After that, a numbered yellow tag would be affixed to the sheep’s ear. Throughout this operation the sheep would be entirely quite but once released, they would scamper off bleating out of the corral. I watched the process, fascinated.

The next morning I awoke early to take photographs. It had rained during the night and the ground was soggy but the morning dawned partially clear and the summer sun caused the bogs and pastures to steam as it burned off the moisture. Still, within minutes wetness had seeped through my new hiking boots as I worked my way through damp meadows and along the muddy trails that meandered among the lenga forest. I wondered why the waterproofing I had applied to the boots in New York was not working. Later, I would come to realize the only way to keep one’s feet dry in Tierra del Fuego is not to travel there in the first place.

I worked my way along the shore line to a point I hoped would allow me to find the spot where Kent had sketched Mount Hope. "Mountain at the Foot of Fognano" he called it in his book, misspelling the cleric's name. The wind had picked up. Whitecaps danced along the surface of the lake. I cursed the flimsy light-weight tripod I had purchased just for this trip.

Despite wet feet, despite winds and an inferior tripod, despite clouds that continued to obscure the peaks on the southern side of the lake -- the same peaks German assured me were depicted in a one of Kent’s paintings -- despite all this I was supremely happy. Here I was, 6,000 miles from home, tracing the path of one of my boyhood heroes, standing in perhaps the very same spot where he had stood, brush in hand, eighty-six years earlier. I was finally on the shores of this magnificent lake which, in Kent’s words, “scarcely a hundred men can ever have beheld…” Of course, in the manner of the day, Kent was not including native men in his calculation, only whites. But his point was clear and what made it all the more amazing to me as I stood there was the realization that even today there can hardly be many more who have seen the lake from where I stood. That will all change, of course, once the road is finally opened, but, for now, I could take pride in my efforts to have gotten to this spot.

Later that morning, German and Rodrigo decided to take me for a walk to see Admiralty Sound. It was a steep climb. We followed a gully, at points needing to use our hands to pull ourselves forward. German was fast. We two younger men had to struggle to keep up with him. He told us this trail – a generous word, I thought – was what he sometimes used when he had first moved to the lake. It led, eventually, to Jackson Bay, on Admiralty Sound, where there was a dock where he would unload supplies, put them on horses, and slog along the trail back to the lake.

German stooped from time to time to pick Magellan strawberries (rubus geoides). This is a curious plant, actually a type of rasperry, whose fruit appears to grow downwards, into the moss. The berry is delicious, sweet and juicy, but it takes will power at first to get over the thought that you are about to put into your mouth this thing you've just pryed out from the moss and mud of the damp earth. But you quickly get used to blowing off the dirt as best you can and popping the succulent berries into your mouth.

After about 30 minutes of climbing, we came to a level spot, at the top of a rise strewn with boulders and a few wind-stunted trees. German pointed towards the west. I turned my face into the wind and there I could make out the steel-grey explanse of Admiralty Sound, that rough body of water where I would soon, with luck, be sailing in my quest to follow Rockwell Kent. Then I looked back and saw, sheltered from the west wind by mountain peaks, the placid, pale blue waters of Lago Fagnano. The sun was trying to push through clouds that melded with the snow-capped mountains all around. Where it did, the sunlight turned the lake into the most beautiful shade of turquoise, of an almost Caribbean hue. This, my companions told me, was caused by the milky, mineral-rich waters of the surrounding glaciers.

After dinner on my first day, after German had looked through my images and told me where I would find the scenes of most of Kent's paintings, and after Rodrigo had gone off to work on his horse-taming, I sat in the living room of German's cozy house and we talked. The summer twilight is long in the far south and as the light slowly faded and the objects in the room became less distinct, German became more voluble. He speaks a bit of English that he picked it up in the 1970s, in the days before he became a rancher. Apparently, this amazing man once worked for an American oil company, first in Tierra del Fuego and then, later, on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico. With German's bits of English and my broken Spanish we were able to communicate.

He told me how difficult it is to run a small estancia. At 3,500 hectares, Estancia Fagnano is considered very small and he can not keep the huge herds you find on the vast grasslands to the north and east. I would learn later that a ranch of fewer than 20,000 hectares is considered barely viable in Patagonia. German told me that while most estancia owners were gentlemen ranchers, he could not afford such luxury. "I must work," he said. "Every day. And I must do tourism, too. Without that I could not survive here."

German told me how his father had struggled to make the land profitable but had failed and ultimately lost the land. He told me of the difficulties he himself had had convincing the government that he could run it profitably, could succeed where his father had failed. He was finally granted title to the land twenty-five years ago and, though hard, back-breaking work, he has made a small success of it.

Then he spoke of the road and how it has changed everything about his life.

The government of Chile plans to continue the road past Lago Fagnano all the way across the Darwin Range to Yendegaia Bay on the Beagle Channel, far to the south. Based on the rugged terrain and the limited progress so far, some estimate it will be a decade before the road reaches the sea. Others doubt it will ever be finished. Sceptics point out that the road makes no sense. Other than German, no one lives on the vast tracts of land between Vicuna and the proposed terminus at Yendegaia. And even at Yendegaia there is nothing but a Carabinero outpost with seven lonely policemen; another two people live across Yendegaia Bay at a defunct ranch, but that's it. "Why build a road to nowhere," the sceptics ask? "Who will use it?"

I see it differently. This land is spectacularly beautiful, especially Fagnano, but it is indescribably difficult to reach. With the road will come tourists. Argentines will be able to drive their RVs to Fagnano and they will pay a lot of money for the priviledge to have an asado under the tall lenga trees of German's ranch and to fish in Fagnano and enjoy the sight of snow-capped mountains reflected in the sparkling blue water. I believe that with the road the tourists will come and this will put more money into German’s pockets and perhaps ease his retirement a bit. That is a good thing but, at the same time, German knows that with the road something very special will have gone from this part of the world and that knowledge concerns him, and it makes him wistful.

At first, German opposed the road. Now, he has come to terms with it. He has seen how much easier it is to get his cattle to market and he knows that without the road he would seldom see his wife as she no longer able to make the three-day ride out on horseback. And even German himself admits that at age sixty-five his horse-riding days are limited. "So, the road will allow me to stay on this land a little bit longer," he says.

I think about all he has done to build this ranch by the lake he loves and I think about him being able to enjoy it just a bit longer and I find that I, too, am glad for the road.

Letting History Judge

2009-01-07T04:43:00.001-08:00

As the administration of the nation's 43rd president draws to a long-anticipated close, we learn President Bush is looking to history to provide the final say on how he made use of his years in power. He is fond of pointing out President Truman left the White House with very low approval ratings but is now seen as one of the more able chief executives in the country's history. He apparently expects the same verdict will be returned for him. I will get to Truman in a bit, but first I thought I would continue on the theme of my last post -- looking at the legacy of another president named George -- to provide some answers on how great power should be wielded in a democracy.

The final chapter of Rebels & Redcoats -- an amazing book that tells the story of the Revolutionary War through contemporary letters and journals -- looks at the twilight of the war, an uncertain period between Lord Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown in Oct. 1781 and the end of 1783. That chapter should be required reading for all Americans. Those two years marked an extraordinary period in our history during which all that had been fought for -- self-determination vs. authoritarianism -- lay in the balance. It is no exaggeration to say one man had the power to tip this balance.

In 1783, George Washington was at the height of his popularity, revered as a demi-god by much of the nation for defeating the British. He was also in charge of what was now the most powerful military force in North America and in possession of near dictatorial powers granted to him by Congress. And yet he decided to limit, and ultimately discard, that power, choosing instead to bolster Congress (and with it representative government) at a time when that body was weak, broke, and lacking the charismatic figures who had animated it in the days leading up to the Declaration of Independence.

We often forget the war did not end with Yorktown. Yes, the main British field force had surrendered and this shock had led to the fall of the conservative government in London and a decision to enter into peace negotiations with the Americans, but those negotiations in Paris would drag on and on. Meanwhile, not all was well back in the former colonies. America's two most important seaports, New York and Charleston, were still occupied by British troops, the British navy still controlled the sea lanes, and American loyalists -- some put the number who violently opposed independence at 100,000 -- were still agitating against British withdrawal; in places in the deep south loyalists were still under arms. If that wasn't enough, the United States was bankrupt, without enough funds even to pay its soldiers.

With no money in their pockets and no fighting to focus their energies, the soldiers got restless, as soldiers often do. In the spring of 1783 anonymous pamphlets urged the army to move against Congress in demand of back pay and redress of other grievances. The pamphlets struck a chord with the officers and Washington quickly had a crisis on his hands. He summoned his officers to attend a general meeting, at which he would not preside, to discuss the situation. Perhaps he hoped that in open discourse among themselves the officers would see their actions as dishonorable and step back of their own accord. When it was clear they would not, the General decided to address the meeting.

Washington made it clear to the officers that any revolt of the army would not have his sanction.
"Let me entreat you, gentlemen, on your part not to take measures which, viewed in the calm light of reason, will lessen the dignity and sully the glory you have hitherto maintained; let me request you to rely on the plighted faith of your country and place a full confidence in the purity of the intentions of Congress," he said.

As proof of those intentions, Washington read aloud a letter he had recently from a congressman expressing unqualified support for the army. While the letter showed the officers Congress was not opposed to the army, it was the manner in which Washington read the letter that proved decisive.

According to Major Samuel Shaw, who was in the hall, "His Excellency, after reading the first paragraph, made short pause, took out his spectacles, and begged the indulgence of his audience, while he put them on, observing at the same time that he had grown grey in their service and now found himself growing blind. There was something so natural, so unaffected in this appeal as rendered it superior to the most studied oratory. It forced its way into the heart, and you might see sensibility moisten every eye. The General, having finished, took leave of the assembly."

That ended the rebellion. The officers voted their support of Washington and Congress, repudiated the pamphlets, and meekly went back to their quarters.

Washington again showed his respect for civilian government a few months later. On November 25th, 1783, the British evacuated New York City for their ships and Washington entered the town to great fanfare at the head of his army. The imagery of a victorious general leading his army into a great city as citizens cheer the lifting of tyranny is a familiar one. Castro entering Havana in 1959 or DeGaule entering Paris in 1944 both come to mind. But, unlike those two, and most of the other examples throughout history, Washington did not hold onto his power. On December 4th, the very day the last British warships finally cleared Sandy Hook, Washington called his officers together at Fraunces Tavern to take his leave of them and, by his example, remind them that they, too, should lay down their weapons and return power to the elected representatives of the people. (See image, right, of Washington being hugged by portly Gen. Knox.)

He then made his way south to officially resign his commission before Congress, at that time sitting in Annapolis. On December 23rd, before the very Congressmen whose necks he had saved from his own army a few months earlier, Washington said, "Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theater of action, and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission and take my leave of all the employments of public live."

He took from his breast pocket the piece of paper that had commissioned him commander-in-chief in the summer of 1775 and handed it to the President of the Congress. He then mounted his horse and headed for Mount Vernon (right), keeping his promise to Martha to be home by Christmas.

I write this not simply to remind everyone of Washington's greatness. Rather it is an attempt to think about how leaders deal with their own power, and, by extension, how the nation as a whole handles power.

Over the past eight years, we have seen the power of this nation more often than not wielded in an awesome, unilateral, and unsatisfactory manner. President Bush has held immense power over these years. I would argue that power has been used in a manner in which his predecessor (and I mean Washington, not Pappy Bush) would not approve. Congress gave Washington near dictatorial powers to prosecute the rebellion but he used these powers lightly and relinquished them immediately. Oftentimes, the actions of President Bush, on the otherhand, have appeared to be one continually trying to expand executive power at the expense of individual rights: illegal wiretapping of US citizens, extraordinary renditions, indefinite detention, torture, and dubious signing statements that reserve the President's right to ignore the will of Congress are some examples that come to mind. On the international front, at a time when the power and wealth of the United States is unchallenged President Bush unilaterally launched an unnecessary war, walked away from treaties, and insisted US soldiers be held immune from prosecution before the international court.

Washington, on the other hand, showed us that the true sign of great leadership is the necessity of limiting one's power precisely when it is at its height. As general, and later as president, he chose to step aside at the very moment when he held the most power.

Now, back to those presidential twins apparently separated at birth, George W Bush and Harry S Truman. While Bush may like to compare himself to his plain-spoken mid-western predecessor, I would argue that the only thing the two have in common is low approval ratings and a love of fishing (see left). Truman, like Bush, was a war president but he chose to use the extraordinary power America likes to give its war leaders in vastly different ways.

In 1945, when Truman took office, the United States held supreme military and economic power in the world; as World War II ended, the US was the only one of the five victorious nations with any strength left. What course did Truman take at this time of unprecedented US economic, political, and military dominance in the world? Did he launch a "preemptive" war of regime change against the Soviet Union, as some counseled? Did he thumb his nose at international organizations? Did he increase spending on weapons systems? Did he hold enemy combatants in concentration camps while delaying their trial for years on end? Did he authorize surveillance against US citizens? Did he send his soldiers on tour-after-tour of duty far from home?

At the very height of US dominance in the world, Truman attempted to subjugate America's power wherever possible in the furtherance of peace. Truman hastened the establishment of the global governing structure envisioned by Roosevelt and Churchill: the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Court in the Hague, the International Monetary Fund. He launched the Marshall plan to rebuild Europe (at huge cost to the United States) and also embarked on costly rebuilding in Germany and Japan in the belief that keeping other nations in penury would not be helpful to the United States in the long run. On the domestic front he brought the troops home quickly, championing enforcement of the GI bill and then integrated the military. He understood that for the possessor of unrivalled power, the most important way to further democracy is to impose limits on power. In his own way, Truman was following the precedent started by George Washington.

History is going to ask a lot of questions of President George W. Bush and I expect his answers will be found wanting. For all he did in his eight years, I believe he will be most harshly judged for his attempts to expand executive power at the expense of Congress and the Judiciary and for his decision that fundamental civil rights (of citizen and foreigner alike) should take a back seat to security concerns.

At precisely the moment when President Bush had the support of the entire nation and much of the world, at a time when he could have asked for and received almost anything, he chose to grab more power, to make a mockery of Congress, and trample on the rights of his own citizens. Oh, and let's not forget he also chose this time to unleash the most powerful military the world has ever seen in the conquest and ham-fisted occupation of a 3rd rate power.

He forgot Washington's fundamental lesson that humility in the possession of great power is the highest calling of leadership.

Morristown, 1779

2009-01-02T06:08:00.000-08:00

The cold snap we've had in New York the past few days has actually been something of a reassurance. Others may grumble, but cold weather puts a skip in my step. I enjoy the bracing East River wind on my cheeks and the tears that well up when I first step out my door onto Front Street to face the blast of cold from the water. It makes me think perhaps the world is not out-of-whack after all. Winters are supposed to be cold. We live in a temperate zone; we should feel it.

As anyone who lives here knows, New York can get downright cold. I think it must have something to do with the water all around us and how the buildings appear to amplify the wind, forcing it down the canyons and corners so you never quite escape it no matter which way you turn or up what street you scamper. The wind seems to be always there, right in your face.

One thing a cold front does is force me to reflect on winters past to compare what we are going though with what we have already experienced. For me, one recent winter stands out. The winter of the transit strike in 2005, while perhaps not the coldest, stands out for sheer inconvenience and the camaraderie of shared suffering that sprang up amongst New Yorkers. I'll never forget how my heart went out to those poor souls forced to cross the city's bridges on foot day after day in the bitter cold. As for me, I enjoyed the long walk up the Bowery and Park Avenue to my office. I liked dressing for the weather, pulling my suit trousers over a snug pair of long-johns and because of the strike, no one was expected to make it into the office on time so I was able to savor those long, cold walks.

All this, however, was put into perspective the other day as I read accounts of the sufferings of George Washington's troops during the miserable winter of 1779/80. The book, Rebels and Redcoats, by Scheer and Rankin (World Publishing Co., Cleveland, 1957), tells the history of the American Revolution through first-person accounts, letters, journals, etc, from participants on both sides of the conflict. In 1779, Washington camped his army around Morristown, New Jersey (see image below), near enough to keep an eye on the British in New York, but well protected by intervening mountains and rivers.

Generally, however, when we think of the winter-time miseries faced by the Continental soldiers it is Valley Forge, in 1777/78, that comes to mind. But, Morristown, two years later, was in many respects much worse. All the logistical problems faced at Valley Forge were also present at Morristown--the unshod soldiers, the lack of food, fickle state governments recalling their local militias. But we remember Valley Forge, and rightly so, because that was the year when things looked most bleak for the rebellion. That winter was the nadir of the struggle. After Valley Forge, the tide of the conflict finally turned in favor of the Americans. The army that marched out of Valley Forge in the Spring of 1778 was a cohesive force, well-trained and hardened by the adversity they faced, ready to meet the British who had been living it up in snug Philadelphia twenty miles away. Then, France declared war against Britain and made the conflict global, compelling the Empire to defend outposts in India, the Mediterranean, and the West Indies. So, while individual soldiers might freeze and die in the winters that would follow Valley Forge, the rebellion itself would not and independence was only a matter of time, and perseverance.

But Morristown in 1779 would test that perseverance because the winter that descended on the land was by far the worst in memory. From the first of December, when Washington established camp, there was unrelenting bitter cold and almost daily snowfall. On that first day the troops began building their own shelters, log huts made from the surrounding green oak and pine trees but until those huts were completed, the men lived in what few tents they had. As at Valley Forge, many of the soldiers were without shoes or hats. Those without tents slept in crude burrows in the earth. But soon the ground was so frozen as to make digging almost impossible.

Dr. James Thacher, a physician from Barnstable, Massachusetts attached to the Continental army, described the snow and cold this way, "No man could endure its violence many minutes without danger of his life. Several marquees (large field tents) were torn asunder and blown down over the officers' heads in the night and some of the soldiers were actually covered while in their tents and buried like sheep under the snow." And, "the soldiers are so enfeebled from hunger and cold, as to be almost unable to perform their military duty or labor in constructing their huts."

By early January the snow at Morristown measured, according to Dr. Thacher, "from four to six feet in depth." The snows continued until late March. General De Kalb described it as being, "...so cold that the ink freezes on my pen, while I am sitting close to the fire. The roads are piled with snow until, at some places they are elevated twelve feet above their ordinary level."

But to me, the most amazing fact is that the Hudson River froze completely across and to such a thickness that the British were able to transport artillery over it. The British garrison on Staten Island was supplied by sleigh and once a troop of cavalry rode from there to the Battery. As someone who has closely observed New York harbor for many years, I find this last astounding. Even on the coldest winters the harbor has never frozen. The most I have seen in 16 years is sheets of ice forming around the edges of piers or isolated patches floating in the river, giving a slightly thick, viscous appearance to the surface of the water. But frozen solid? Never.

So, while the British were enjoying sleigh rides on the Upper Bay and the hills of Staten Island, Washington and his men were freezing and starving in the woods of New Jersey. The provisioning problems that had bedeviled the army at Valley Forge were perhaps even worse at Morristown, as hard as that might be to imagine: Washington's army in 1779 was now larger and had many more mouths to feed; the Continental currency--in which soldier and officers were paid and supplies were purchased--was worthless; central New Jersey, after years as the primary battlefield of the war, was not the bread-basket it had been, and finally, massive snowdrifts often blocked the roads to Morristown, delaying what little supplies there were. To make matters worse, Congress seemed no longer able to provide for the army. Congress had became a shell of its old self and the new law of the land, the Articles of Confederation, gave the supreme power to the states. The great voices of the first and second Continental Congress were gone: Franklin and Adams were in Europe, Jefferson was governor of Virginia, and Hancock, Washington, and many others were fighting the war. This meant Washington increasingly had to appeal to the individual states for provisions for his troops.

Joseph Plum Martin, a private from Connecticut who had enlisted as a 15-year old three years prior, described the food situation at Morristown this way, "We were literally starved. I do solemnly declare that I did not put a single morsel of victuals into my mouth for four days and as many nights, except a little black birch bark, which I gnawed off a stick of wood, if that can be called victuals."

Remember, many of the men were without shoes. It was said you could track the Continental Army by following the drops of blood left in the snow by unshod feet. Some of those who had shoes were forced to look on them as a source of food. Martin writes, "I saw several...men roast their old shoes and eat them, and I was afterwards informed...that some of the officers killed and ate a favorite little dog that belonged to one of them."

Through it all, Washington suffered with his men. He could have returned to Mount Vernon for the winter. In the gentlemanly world of 18th century European warfare it was customary for hostilities to cease in the winter months allowing high-ranking military officers to go home. Many of the British officers sailed home for the winter and General Gates, the second highest ranking Continental general, spent that winter at his home in Virginia, as did several other of Washington's commanders. At the very least, Washington could have chosen to winter in Philadelphia, but he stayed with his troops, encouraging them, all the while writing a stream of never-ending letters imploring Congress and the states to provide food and clothing for his starving and threadbare army.

It is important to note that Washington worked without pay, winter after freezing winter. When he reluctantly accepted the position of Commander-in-Chief from his colleagues in Congress in 1775, he specifically stipulated he would do so without pay saying in his remarks on the floor, "As to pay, sir, I beg leave to assure the Congress that as no pecuniary consideration could have tempted me to have accepted this arduous employment at the expense of my domestic ease and happiness, I do not wish to make any profit from it: I will keep an exact account of my expenses...that is all I desire."

Eventually, Washington's pleas for help for his starving army had gone unheeded long enough and he was forced to turn to long-suffering New Jersey, essentially taking over administration of the state himself and dividing it into military districts, each of which was compelled to provide food and other provisions. The Continental currency being pretty much worthless, Washington knew he was essentially taking food and clothing without recompense. He reminded his requisitioning officers to be as gentle as possible, "...delicately let [the local magistrates] know you are instructed, in case they do not take up the business immediately, to begin to impress the Articles called for... This you will do with as much tenderness as possible to the Inhabitants."

It is easy to descend into hagiography when describing Washington, and many have (see image at left, which shows him calling on a friend for help), but what you learn when you read the letters and journals of the soldiers and officers who served under him, even the writings of his enemies, is that he was almost universally revered by his contemporaries. In the Spring of 1776, just a few months after Washington took command of the army, one young New Englander, in a letter home, called him, "the greatest man in the world." Suffice it to say that wealthy Virginia planters were not class of people usually admired in New England. After his campaign of delaying actions in New Jersey in 1777, a British observer, Nicholas Cresswell, had this to say about him, "Washington is certainly a most surprising man, one of Nature's geniuses, a Heaven-born general, if there is any of that sort...He certainly deserves some merit as a general that he...can keep [the British army] dancing from one town to another...Washington, my enemy that he is, I should be sorry if he should be brought to an ignominious death."

In his own letters you can see Washington's humanity. The Marquis de Lafayette, only twenty-two at the time, was sitting out the winter of 1779/80 in France with his bride. He and Washington had by now formed an almost father-son, friendship. Washington had no natural-born children of his own; although he did adopt Martha's children from her previous marriage. In response to a letter from Lafayette in which the newly-wed playfully admits he has, "a wife who is in love with you," Washington jokingly writes back, "Tell her...that I have a heart susceptible to the tenderest passion, and that it is already so strongly impressed with the favorable ideas of her that she must be cautious of putting love's torch to it, as you must be in fanning the flame."

Washington is so present in the American consciousness today we actually ignore him or, worse, stifle a yawn when we hear of his exploits. "Yes, yes, Washington," we say to ourselves, "truly a great and noble man; now where did I put that fascinating book about Jefferson (or Adams, or Madison, or Hamilton...)?" He is like oxygen, ever-present but unheeded and under-appreciated. And yet, I've surprised myself these past few days that the more I read about him, the more impressed I become. Apparently, I am not alone in wondering at this conversion of opinion. I am reminded of a story my father once told me many years ago when I was in high-school. He knew a thing or two about military history and was always telling us stories about military leaders but this one stayed in my mind in part because he used another historian's words to make his point. I can't remember the words exactly but it was in response to my question as to who was the greater general, Robert E. Lee or Washington. "I remember," my father said, "asking Douglas Southall Freeman, the great Lee historian, what his next project would be. He told me he had decided to write a biography about 'the second-greatest Virginian' by which he meant Washington. When I saw him several years later," my father recounted, "I reminded him of our conversation and he told me that after several years of research and writing he was now convinced that 'not only was Washington the greatest Virginian, he was the greatest American'."

When I reflect on that miserable winter in Morristown in 1779--how Washington was able to keep his army together in the face of it, to find them food and clothing, to inspire them to undertake yet another year of inconclusive campaigning and, by the force of his example, to keep the ideals of the Revolution alive when others in the country were losing their will or engaging in profiteering and graft--I can't help but agree.

The Mystery of the Sara

2008-12-20T13:51:00.000-08:00

When he returned to New York from Punta Arenas, Chile in 1923 the painter, Rockwell Kent, brought back 20 incomplete canvases and scores of drawings from seven months spent in Tierra del Fuego.

Once completed, the paintings were quickly acknowledged to be among the most striking landscapes ever produced by an American artist. (One of my favorites, "Admiralty Sound, Tierra del Fuego", now at the Hermitage Museum, is reproduced here.) The drawings, powerfully evocative black and white line images, illustrate Kent’s book, Voyaging: Southward from the Strait of Magellan, an account of his travels that became a best-seller and remains a popular work with collectors today (see image, below right).

One painting Kent produced while in the region, however, did not come back to New York with him. That work was not a landscape—although the Fuegian Andes do appear in the background—but instead a portrait, a portrait not of a person but of a beloved vessel, the three-masted schooner, Sara. Kent’s portrait of the Sara was the only one of his paintings, to my knowledge, he left in Tierra del Fuego. It may well also be the only one he fully completed there. The painting was done in exchange for repairs to Kent’s own boat, the Kathleen, which almost sank his first day out from Punta Arenas.

Kent’s half-baked plan when he departed New York in June 1922 was to travel to Punta Arenas and there somehow—he was not yet famous and had no money—procure a boat and sail it westward through the Strait of Magellan, around Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn, and then back to Punta Arenas. Upon arrival he managed to get hold of a lifeboat from one of the many abandoned hulks rotting in the harbor at Punta Arenas. One of the vessels there at that time, dismasted and forgotten, was the South Street Seaport Museum’s own ship Wavertree. She had been towed to Punta Arenas in 1911 after being dismasted in a storm off Cape Horn. Alas, it was from another vessel that Kent swiped the lifeboat.

The lifeboat was quickly decked over, a keel added, mast and rigging raised and turned into a 26’ sloop he christened the Kathleen, after the wife he left behind in New York. It was a masterful conversion but done too hastily, apparently. Several hours after casting off, the boat started taking on so much water Kent feared she would sink. Kent decided to put into Port Harris on Dawson Island, where he knew there was a sawmill and shipyard. It was quickly determined Kathleen would need extensive repairs if she was to make it to the Horn and back. Kent had no money for repairs but in exchange he offered to paint a portrait for the mill manager of the schooner Sara (see right).

The Sara elicited bittersweet pride in Port Harris. She had been built there just a few years earlier, in 1919, the largest ever built in Chile at the time. She was likely built for Sara Braun, a wealthy entrepreneur, to haul wool from her extensive sheep estancias to market (see Sara Braun’s mansion in Punta Arenas as it appears today, at left). I say “likely” because the records are scanty and my Spanish scantier still. But I am allowing myself the conjecture because the dates are right, the spelling of Sara is right, and wool figures prominently in the short life of the Sara.

Just three years after her launch, Sara caught fire and sank. Her cargo? Wool. She went down without loss of life in February 1922, the same year Rockwell Kent found himself stranded in the little mill town of her birth. The emotions in Port Harris were still raw over the loss of their pride and joy so the offer, by a real artist, to preserve her memory on canvas was gladly accepted. “Dawson lived upon the memory of Sara,” wrote Kent. “And that time might never dim for them the recollection of her glory I would paint her portrait.” While the shipwrights worked on Kathleen, Kent worked on Sara. He worked from photographs and plans and from the vivid, loving recollections of the men who had built her.

While Kent was fiercely proud of the lines of his own boat, he was not terribly complementary of the Sara. In his journal he calls her “huge, clumsy, hideous” but also “tenderly loved” and “a triumph of construction.” Of course, he kept these views out of his book, perhaps in grateful respect to the many Chilenos so helpful to him throughout his trip. Instead, in the book he refers to Sara as Chile’s Great Eastern. This is still a backhanded compliment; the Great Eastern was an ugly, six-masted monster built in London in 1858 (see image, right). But, to the casual reader, Kent would appear to be comparing the vessels in their size and the accomplishement of their construction rather than commenting on aesthetics. Being more charitable, I prefer to compare Sara not to the Great Eastern but to the Great Republic, a lovely clipper ship built in Boston in 1853 and which, like the Sara, saw her life cut short by fire. Sara lasted three years before being consumed; the Great Republic (right, below) burned the very month of her maiden voyage. She burned to the waterline in New York on December 27th, 1853 in a fire that started on land, in a bakery located on the very block in which I write these words.

When Kent was finished with his protrait of the Sara he presented it to Senor Marcou, the manager of the mill and the man who had not only authorized the repairs to the Kathleen but befriended Kent during the weeks he was marooned on Dawson Island. Marcou was so taken by the painting he decided to hang it in his bedroom where he could admire it every day. Word of the painting had spread far on the island and Marcou believed his heavily-armed bedroom was the safest place for it. So fierce was his pride in possessing the painting he asked Kent to write a letter attesting the work had been given to Marcou himself and no one else, not the company, not the board of directors, not the designers of the vessel.

Imagine my astonishment, then, to find the painting, eighty six years later, not on Dawson Island or in a museum in Punta Arenas or Valparaiso but in a gallery in New York City. I immediately made an appointment to view the painting, now called "The Sara at Dawson Island" (see image, below). It was much larger than I was expecting and in-person you can properly take in the detail. This was no gauzy, impressionistic canvas. It was meant to be a portrait in the most complete sense of the word, a portrait destined for a lover with every detail of the beloved captured and preserved. And Kent delivers that detail. “…I began upon such an elaboration of details as only the…all-cherishing memories of the ship’s creators could have suggested…” In the painting you can see every line, every block, every reefing nettle. I can imagine Senior Marcou looking lovingly at his Sara each night before bed. Kent doesn’t say if Marcou was married, but if so, I can imagine his wife’s jealousy.

Kent describes his painting thus, “Upon a dark green sea, against a background of the gleaming snow peaks of Dawson and a thunder dark sky, I put her, sailing, all sails set, before the wind; and in the foreground, heedless of anachronism, appeared the little Kathleen.” Yes, in a final bit of conceit, Kent—betraying his habit of self-promotion—inserts himself into the painting, at the helm of the Kathleen, a tiny Stars and Stripes flying in friendly salute to the pride of Chile’s merchant fleet.

How did this painting, born in the furthest southern reaches of the hemisphere, make its way from under lock and key in Senior Marcou’s bedroom to a sleek Fifth Avenue gallery? The records are unclear. The current owner of the work, D. Wigmore Gallery has no record of its provenance and Christie’s, which sold the work in 1997, could not disclose how, or even when the work made its way to the United States.

Marcou was just 35 when Kent met him so any children he might have had may yet be alive today living out their remaining years in or around Punta Arenas. Certainly any grandchildren might be alive. Kent’s diaries and letters make no mention of any future contact with Marcou. Although he liked and admired the man, there was apparently no correspondence between them. This is particularly surprising because Kent kept in touch with others he met there and, without Marcou’s generosity, Kent’s travels in Tierra del Fuego would have ended almost before they began, and the art he produced there and the book that propelled his fame would never have seen the light of day.

So, what happened? Was the work stolen, as Senior Marcou had feared? Did he give it to one of his heirs who then cashed in on Kent’s fame? Or did some enterprising collector, reading about the painting in Kent’s book go to Tierra del Fuego to seek out Marcou and make him an offer? By the 1930s, Rockwell Kent was arguably America’s most famous artist. The hard dollars a collector would have offered could have gone a long way to making Marcou's life significantly more comfortable. But the mystery remains. Just how did this painting make its way those 9,000 miles from Tierra del Fuego to the island of Manhattan?

I intend to keep searching but, for now, I’ve reached a dead end. All I can do is admire the picture I have of the Sara and hope to learn more once I get to Punta Arenas and Dawson Island. [To be continued.]

Getting to Know Hugo

2008-10-11T06:34:00.000-07:00

Even his name is weighty. Victor Hugo. The kind of name you’d expect a great man of letters to have.

Can’t you see him sitting there, in his robe, in a comfortable arm-chair in his study, dictating to a secretary his latest story or perhaps going through the never-ending correspondence from his many admirers, a fire crackling in the hearth beside him?

As I picture him, he’s running his fingers contemplatively through his beard, speaking deliberately, slowly, each magnificent sentence coming from his lips fully-formed, perfection uttered.

I had always placed Hugo high in the pantheon of great writers in my mind, perhaps not on a par with the greatest, but securely in the clouds, beyond the point where they can be seen clearly, enveloped in reputation amplifying haze, up there with Gogol and Schiller, Ovid and Proust, and all those others I’ve hardly read but who I’m told are great. And with Hugo, the particular charm was that he could appeal to the most highly cultured and the most brutish of souls both. I recently came across a travel piece in which the writer encounters on a remote island a poacher, a dangerous man, a murderer, an ex-convict, yet someone who speaks fondly of his favorite writers, Dostoyevsky (of course) and Victor Hugo, the great portrayers of tormented souls.

But the sad fact is until very recently I’d never read anything by Hugo. As someone who speaks a little French, I had always told myself I should wait to read French literature when I can read it in the original. Sadly, that level of fluency always seemed to remain just out of reach. So, despite my French name and French relatives and extensive travel in francophone countries, I am embarrassingly illiterate when it comes to French literature.

Several months ago, in Skyline Books on 18th Street -- one of my favorite places in spite of the pervasive cat odor -- I came across a small copy of Hugo’s Quatre-vingt-treize (Ninety-three), about the bloodiest year of the French Revolution, 1793. It was in one of those school editions designed for students of French complete with a vocabulary at the back and handy notes to explain the idiomatic expressions and other bits of French arcania. I dove into it. Well, actually, wading would be the more apt metaphor. Like a swimmer tentatively walking into chilly water, I went forward slowly, my progress halting and deliberate, flipping back and forth between text and vocabulary, rereading sentences whose meaning was unclear, referring back to earlier chapters to see if Hugo’s use of a once new, now familiar, word had changed. Eventually, however, I was in deep, swimming slowly, deliberately, but still keeping my head above water. I was reading Victor Hugo, in French and I was very pleased with myself.

But I was not at all pleased with the story. From the very first page I was confronted with wooden, two-dimensional characters. I could hardly believe what I was reading. Was this sappy stuff really by Victor Hugo, that towering genius of French letters? To excuse him I told myself it must be the subject matter that was causing him to write this way. Maybe for a Frenchman it is just too difficult to portray both sides of participants in the Revolution with depth and subtlety, so great were the passions, so raw the violence.

In Hugo’s characters, the two sides, revolutionary and royalist, conformed to the most crude generalizations. The revolutionaries were stalwart folk. Parisian workers for the most part, but leavened with a few hardy peasants who had finally risen up against the venality of the aristocracy and the clergy to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with they oppressed urban brethren. They were tough, brave, and loyal, fired by revolutionary and nationalistic zeal to rid the land of their former oppressors and the foreign monarchs now preying on France. Interestingly, in Hugo’s version, they are never led by one of their own but always by a former aristocrat or clergyman or general who has embraced the revolution. As if to say, these simple folk make great soldiers, but don’t ask them to actually think or take initiative. The royalists, in the main, were made up of ignorant peasants still in the thrall of the church, too timid or too stupid to envision an alternative to their miserable lives. These were led by aristocrats, men of great honor and character who committed great acts of cruelty against the revolutionaries, as if these could not be Frenchmen anymore having risen up against the ancien regime.

The very first character Hugo introduces as the book opens is of a piece with the others that follow. She is a peasant woman, three young children huddled miserably around her, the youngest one literally at her breast. She is in hiding in the deep woods, hungry, clothes in rags, running from the life that saw her house destroyed and her husband wrenched from her arms, sent to fight by priest and seigneur for a monarch he had never seen. She is found by the hardy Parisian revolutionaries and immediately taken into their company, her children happily adopted as mascots of the unit. It doesn’t get much better. In each new chapter I was confronted by yet another cardboard character: the kind-hearted hermit who befriends a lost stranger and shares with him his humble hovel and simple evening meal of chestnuts, not realizing until later that the stranger was actually a noble, returned from abroad to lead the counter-revolution and a devastating scorched-earth policy; the defrocked priest, now revolutionary leader, who risks his life to save a young nobleman who had once been his charge in more peaceful days; the bloodthirsty aristocrat whose sense of honor compels him to walk into a burning building to save three peasant children knowing as he does so it will mean certain capture and execution by the encircling revolutionary forces. And there were many others, each one utterly unsatisfying. How, I kept asking myself, could Victor Hugo, the great, perhaps greatest, novelist in French be responsible for characters like these? What does this say about him? What does it say about French literature?

I kept reading. Who doesn’t love melodrama, after all? But, it was more than that. For every cringe-inducing character, for every syrupy statement, there were descriptions of sublime beauty. Interestingly, these tended to be descriptions of landscape or movement or atmosphere, not the utterings of his characters. One of the most harrowingly beautiful descriptions is the life he breathes into a canon broken loose on the pitching deck of a ship. In the destructive, utterly irrational, careening of this canon Hugo paints an astonishing portrayal of evil suddenly come to life. Among the hardened sailors -- men who cheer when they learn they are about to face an enemy in battle -- this wild animal of wood and iron invokes instant terror. They know it can crush a man, that it obeys no known rules of movement, has no mind, yet it is alive, an enraged, malevolent beast bent on killing or maiming every crewmember who comes within its reach. I read that passage and my pulse was racing. I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered a more terrifying, more beautifully breathtaking description of an inanimate object.

And there were many others, interspersed between the embarrassing utterances and actions of his cut-out characters. It was for these I kept on reading Quatre-vignt-treize.

To illustrate, I’ll end by quoting a passage contrasting nature’s creation with one of man’s as dawn breaks over the land and the morning light illuminates the scaffold of a guillotine erected for an early morning execution.

***

”Never was the fresh sky of day more charming than that morning. A soft breeze stirred the heather, the haze crawled softly in the branches, the forest of Fougeres, fully infused by the breath that came from the springs, smoked in the dawn like a vast pan full of incense; the blue of the firmament, the whiteness of the clouds, the clear transparence of the waters, the verdure, this harmonious gradation which goes from aqua-marine to emerald; the fraternal groups of trees, the sheets of grass, the deep plains, all had this purity which is the eternal counsel of nature to man. In the midst of all that was spread out the awful human immodesty; in the midst of all that appeared the fortress and the scaffold, war and torment, the two figures of the bloodthirsty age and the bloody minute. In the presence of flowering creation, perfumed, loving, and charming, the splendid sky inundated [the fortress of] La Torgue and the guillotine at dawn, and seemed to say to man: look at what I make and look at what you make.”